Hello! For the next week the Magnard Ensemble will be travelling all around Scotland sharing wonderful pieces of wind quintet repertoire, including works by James Macmillan, Mozart, Ligeti, Hindemith, Amy Beach and others.

After months of planning (and a very beautifully organized spreadsheet courtesy of Mana) four out of five set off from London Euston for Dumfries, where we had a hire car booked to transport us all around Scotland. Upon our arrival, however, we were surprised to be greeted with this absolute monster:

Blog readers, meet NESSIE.

She is big. She is beautiful. And she’s ours for the next six days! We even joked we could play a whole concert inside if we wanted to (we just might…)! Bottom line is, we love her, she’s already an honorary member of the Ensemble, and we’re very excited to document our adventures with her.

The short drive from Dumfries to our first venue in Lockerbie saw us pick up oboist Mana from the station and then onwards to our hotel – where our first concert was going to take place the following evening! Shortest concert commute ever?

After a good night’s sleep, we had close to a whole day to explore Lockerbie and take a walk round the beautiful local nature reserve before coming back to play our first concert of the tour, just down the stairs from our accommodation! Both the Somerton House Hotel and Lockerbie and District Music Society were so welcoming and we got our tour off to a rousing start – an eclectic mix of repertoire from Bach to Leo Geyer, Amy Beach to Ligeti.

Today Nessie whisks us to Kirkcaldy (we’ve been briefed on pronunciation), more from us tomorrow!

Team Magnard x