Voice & piano trio: Tom Poster & Kaleidescope Chamber Collective open Wiltshire Music Centre's 2020 season

Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon

Pianist Tom Poster is the Artist in Residence at the Wiltshire Music Centre (WMC) and Poster will be opening WMC's Spring/Summer 2020 concert season on 24 January 2020 with his Kaleidescope Chamber Collective. Poster, soprano Katharine Dain, violinist Savitri Grier and cellist Laura van der Heijden will be performing a programme which mixes folk-song with the piano trio.  

So there are Beethoven's folk-song arrangements for voice and piano trio (Beethoven never visited the British Isles but he was commissioned to write arrangements of songs by an Edinburgh publisher), Britten folk-songs, RVW's stunning version of The Unquiet Grave (How Cold the Wind Doth Blow) with violin obbligato, and two songs by Amy Beach for soprano and piano trio. There will also be songs by Clara Schumann, as well as Mendelssohn's Piano Trio no. 2 (the finale of which includes the chorale we know as Old Hundredth). The evening ends with Poster's arrangements of Cole Porter songs. 

And if the concert doesn't appeal, then on 1 February, WMC is presenting Sir Scallywag and the Battle of Stinky Bottom, with Ensemble 360 and narrator Polly Ives, based on the book by Gile Andreae with music by Paul Rissmann,

The concert season continues with a piano recital from Benjamin Grosvenor, the City of London Sinfonia and pianist Danny Driver in Beethoven, pianist Steven Osborne in Rachmaninov and Schubert, the Doric String Quartet and the Marmen Quartet in Enescu's Octet for Strings, violinist Alina Ibragimova joins the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for Michael Haydn's Violin Concerto, and Voces 8 perform a programme moving from Renaissance polyphony to contemporary classics. WMC's Young Quartet in Residence is the Marmen Quartet and they will be presenting a Beethoven Festival, 4-7 March, which includes performances of the quartets, lectures and a lecture recital. Many of the concerts are free to the under 25s in an arrangement with the Cavatina Music Trust.

The Wiltshire Music Centre celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018. Founded in Bradford on Avon as a rehearsal space for young musicians, it has developed into a professional concert hall as well as being a community hub, home to many local choirs, orchestras and music groups (over 800 young musicians rehearse there weekly and 60,000 people use the centre each year), as well as a vibrant and varied Creative Learning Programme.

The programme also includes jazz, folk, world music and family concerts. Full details from the Wiltshire Music Centre's website.