Join a captivating journey through Scotland's rich musical traditions with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, offering an array of exceptional events this season. From the enchanting Concerts by Candlelight with the Scottish Ensemble, to the engaging Children’s Messiah, and the timeless classic Messiah, each event promises a unique experience. Discover the fusion of music and puppetry in The Law of Gravity, explore the reflective tones of The Quality of Mercy choral tour, and delight in the joyous Concerts for a Summer’s Night. This series is a testament to Scotland's vibrant cultural tapestry.

Harmonies and Heritage: A Sonic Celebration in Scotland

Fun for all the family is guaranteed in Dunedin Consort’s interactive, 45-minute Children’s Messiah — specially crafted with little ears in mind! Guided by Mr Handel himself, they’ll be whizzing through some of his greatest hits, with plenty of fun and games along the way. Suitable for all ages.
Programme.

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Children’s Messiah

St Aloysius' Church, Garnethill

It’s no surprise that Handel’s Messiah continues to draw audiences back year after year. There is nothing quite like it. Although the Hallelujah chorus has become the work’s calling card, Handel wrote every note to impress and astound his listeners. Its choruses are as grand as anything Handel ever composed, the solo writing profoundly moving, the drama powerful and compelling. Performed ‘the Dunedin way’ as Handel would have first heard it, with a small orchestra, a team of twelve singers and soloists who step out from the chorus, there are few more uplifting ways to celebrate the festive season.

Messiah

In the depths of winter warm your soul and explore a rich selection of music, which weaves between past and present, combining seamlessly to create a beautiful sonic tapestry, in some of Scotland’s most atmospheric settings.

Concerts by Candlelight with Scottish Ensemble

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Two of Scotland’s award-winning ensembles come together to present James MacMillan’s extraordinary setting – by turns intimate and dramatic – of the Resurrection story. Featuring the towering bass-baritone of Matthew Brook, Since it was the day of Preparation… uses chamber forces to make a hugely powerful impact. ‘modern masterpiece’ to Glasgow audiences once again.

Since It Was the Day Of Preparation

St John R C Church

The Cumnock Tryst" class="css-u850" data-mark-multiple="true">The Cumnock Tryst is delighted to present the official launch of our new chamber group The Cumnock Tryst Ensemble. Created with cellist Christian Elliott, this is a flexible ensemble consisting of some of Scotland’s finest musicians who have had an association with us over the last few years.

The Cumnock Tryst Ensemble launch

Dumfries Arms Hotel

The Gesualdo Six present a selection of Motets and Chansons from the French Court focusing on European Queens: Anne of Brittany, Marguerite d’Austria, Anne Boleyn and Mary Tudor. Reflecting on these earthly regencies, devotional motets for the Queen of Heaven are interwoven with texts from the Song of Songs, appropriated to venerate the Blessed Virgin, alongside specially written chansons and motets commemorating key moments in the reign of Europe’s Queens.

Gesualdo Six - Queen of Hearts

St John’s Church, Waterloo

CAMPS now stands for Cumnock Arts Makes People Smile, formerly known as Cumnock Area Musical Production Society! It has been operating in the Cumnock area for a number of years and has been a great focus for the young, and indeed the older people, interested in performing in the musical theatre traditions, and now a wider range of activities. It stages a number of shows annually including a much anticipated Christmas pantomime. it provides activities for the very young up to adult groups. In 2022 CAMPS provided one of the choirs for the moving performance of Gavin Bryars’s Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet at Dumfries House, conducted by James Macmillan. And last year two of their choral groups took part in the Big Saturday performances of A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in the Barony Hall. At this short, relaxed but special morning concert we will see a showcase of their current work accompanied by a special band of musicians.

CAMPS Showcase

North Idaho College

Alastair Savage is originally from Ardrossan in North Ayrshire and has performed all over the world both as a traditional and classical player. He has been a member of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra since 1997 and has toured the world with them. He also appears as a traditional fiddle soloist, broadcasting on the BBC and abroad.

Alastair Savage and Friends

The main work in this concert is All the Hills and Vales Along which James MacMillan composed for the 2018 Cumnock Tryst festival to mark the centenary of the WW1 Armistice. This is an oratorio based on poems by Scotsman Charles Hamilton Sorley who was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

The Cumnock Tryst Tenth Birthday Gala Concert

Barony Hall

The Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023 with a series of stunning concerts nationwide that brought alive the energy of jazz.

Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra

Over the years The Tryst has developed a number of ground-breaking music projects for children and adults with additional support needs. This year James MacMillan has been working in Hillside School and the nearby Riverside Centre alongside Drake Music Scotland and Hebrides Ensemble. This concert comes from a series of creative workshops where all of those involved devised their own music and modes of expression.

The Unbroken Thread

Euan Stevenson" class="css-u850">Euan Stevenson is a Scottish composer, pianist and songwriter. His music embraces jazz, classical references and various other styles, and has featured in films and on TV. He is greatly admired as a performer, featuring as a soloist or in small chamber formations. With a top class, swinging trio, pianist/composer Euan Stevenson pays homage to the styles and techniques of jazz piano icons Duke Ellington, Errol Garner, Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans.

The Euan Stevenson Trio - Ellington To Evans

Hailed as ‘brilliantly fresh, unexpected and exhilarating’ by The Herald, and ‘superb storytelling by four great communicators’ by The Strad Magazine, the Maxwell Quartet is now firmly regarded as one of Britain’s finest young string quartets.

Maxwell Quartet

Old Cumnock Church of Scotland

In collaboration with the Genesis Foundation in London and our East Ayrshire cultural sister organisation Boswell Book Festival The Tryst presents this special panel discussion to mark its tenth anniversary. As part of the ongoing Genesis Conversations taking place around the UK, this event will address key issues relating to the cultural sector and hopes to create greater awareness of the role that the arts can play in rural regeneration. The renowned Scottish journalist Iain Macwhirter leads our prestigious panel of experts in discussion before opening up a Q&A session with our audience.

There are very specific challenges facing rural regeneration which ar

The Cumnock Hour: Genesis Conversations

The students will submit these short works as part of their portfolio submissions to the Scottish Qualifications Authority. The Cumnock Tryst has a commitment to help music teachers in Scotland deliver this part of the curriculum. Based on photographs of the local area taken by celebrated photographer and musician Simon Butterworth, the young composers have responded to this extra-musical stimulus which has helped them think creatively. The photographs became the starting point of their own compositions. Simon’s series is called Abstract Excavationism: The Art of Industrial Land Reclamation.

The Music of Land Reclamation

Barony campus

Steven Osborne OBE is one of Britain’s most treasured musicians with an immense depth of musicality and exceptional refinement of expression across diverse repertoire be it in Beethoven or Messiaen, Schubert or Ravel, Prokofiev or jazz improvisations.

Steven Osborne

Cumnock Trinity Curch

Star soprano Carolyn Sampson sings ‘Jauchzet Gott’ which boasts a virtuoso trumpet obbligato and is one of the most purely joyous of all his works. She also performs ‘Golden’ by the Canadian composer Jocelyn Morlock who died tragically young.  John Butt plays one of Handel’s organ concerti, matched with one of his masterful Op.6 Concerto Grossi. The programme is completed by Locatelli’s remarkable concerto grosso that tells without words the story of Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos.

Carolyn Sampson Sings Bach

Why limit yourself to a label? This is the mantra of Twelfth Day, a distinctive duo featuring Catriona Price (violin) and Esther Swift (pedal harp), who invite listeners old and new to their genre-blending lunchtime performance fusing classical skill with folk roots.

Twelfth Day

Cathedral Precinct

As twilight falls, the cloistered crypt takes on a dense and moody tone—creating a place of sanctuary. Sit back and let your mind wander along with flexuous melodies improvised by jazz legend Tommy Smith.

Tommy Smith

As dusk falls, danger looms… are you brave enough to join us? Prepare to be terrified at this screening of an American horror classic in the haunting setting of Glasgow’s oldest building, with a spine-tingling soundtrack from Odeon Leicester Square’s world-renowned organist, Donald MacKenzie.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920)

Feast your eyes and ears, as fashion and song intersect in this lieder recital like no other. Turning the defiant mindset of the 1920s New Objectivity movement towards today’s social attitudes, Rowan Hellier explores the role of symbolism and sensuality in the modern female identity. Her programme unites music by Rita Strohl, Kurt Weill and Cathy Berberian with outfits created by stage and costume designer Rebekka Dornhege Reyes.

She Represents

The time of year, the time of day, the intensity of light; the warmth, the cool; the breeze, the wind, the rain; the presence and activity of other people and beings going about their lives… join us in the spacious atmosphere of the lower church and unpack what it means ‘to be here, now’.

time-space-sound-light

Music affects us on a profound level, it has the ability to transport and inspire but also to release and heal. Join violist Andrew Berridge and a quartet of musicians to explore the familiar and the new, opening our ears more widely to appreciate the full potential of what live music can do for us. With works by Brahms, Beethoven, Cristobal de Morales, Edmund Finnis, Caroline Shaw and Dobrinka Tabakova, this programme is firmly rooted in Scottish Ensemble’s belief that music can lift spirits and strengthen connections.

Resound with Scottish Ensemble

Adelaide Place Baptist Church

Professor Woland and his bizarre entourage—a redheaded witch, a mischievous cat, and a suit-wearing demon—are on a mission to expose the hypocrisy of the city’s literary elite and art scene. Set against the backdrop of Stalin’s regime, Master & Margarita explores the blurred lines between reality and the supernatural. Interwoven with themes of love and religion, Bulgakov’s satire questions the very nature of good and evil.

Master And Margarita

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Everything can be quantified. All worth can be quantified. Artistic worth. Human worth. Material worth. Everything. Some food is simply better than other food. Isn’t it? Some clothes are better than other clothes. Aren’t they?

Birdland

Enjoy lively arrangements of iconic melodies from both cultures — a medley of Javanese folk songs Cublak Cublak Suweng and Manuk Dadali (one of the winning songs from the World Orchestra Festival) which incorporates a mix of traditional music and Latin American rhythms; Kopi Dangdut, an Indonesian twist on Moliendo Cafe (a Venezuelan song that has since become an iconic Indonesian dance anthem); a traditional Balinese song with hints of ‘Kecak’ (a vibrant polyrhythmic voice chant); as well as modern twists on beloved Scottish classics.

Echoes From The Archipelago - An Indonesian Music Odyssey

When a 30-something actress is suddenly aged-out of the industry, she undergoes a wildly unconventional spa treatment to get her old life back. But it sets her on a whole new path to pursue true power and equality… at a cost. Fountain of You

Fountain of You

Assembly Rooms

When actress Desirée Armfeldt performs in the town of her former lover, old passions rekindle. Over the course of a weekend in the country, a tangle of love affairs is laid bare between four different intertwined couples.

A Little Night Music

The theatre’s always there for you. And if everything gets to be too much, you can take that literally. Such is the case with The London Merchant as it’s taken over by interlopers without shame or decorum. Suddenly, this simple tale of star-crossed lovers bursts its banks.

Knight of the Burning Pestle

Wednesday Addams, known for her love of darkness, has fallen in love with a sweet man from a seemingly respectable and ordinary family. As Wednesday falls in love, family members begin to find out, forcing Gomez, her father, to keep a secret from his love, Morticia.

The Addams Family

Join us for a powerful reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone. This gripping play explores the timeless themes of duty, loyalty, and justice with a raw intensity.  Witness a young woman’s courageous defiance against tyranny, brought to life by our talented MA/MFA Acting/Directing Classical and Contemporary Text students, in an innovative and modern staging. 

Antigone

Scotland’s professional touring company, Opera Bohemia, returns with a reimagining of Puccini’s masterpiece, Tosca. Directed by Douglas Nairne and designed by Kenneth MacLeod, the drama is plunged into a world of crime and passion, amidst the treacherous mafia underworld. Award winning Scottish Soprano Monica McGhee takes on the iconic title role, leading a star cast of RCS alumni. The performance is accompanied by chamber orchestra under the baton of Alistair Digges. This tale of love, lust and deception promises to be another special evening at the opera with Opera Bohemia. Sung in English.

Tosca

St John's Renfield Church

Join us for a summer celebration of dance featuring new works from our Young Ballet Company and Contemporary Youth Dance Company, alongside performances from our weekly Modern Ballet, Contemporary Dance technique, and Pre-Junior Ballet students from Glasgow, Dalkeith Palace and Dumfries House.

Dance Showcase

What can puppetry reveal about music? In a new collaboration with master puppeteer Mark Down and his team at Blind Summit, musicians and puppeteers come together to blend sound and vision, exploring the abstract and the real.

The Law of Gravity with Scottish Ensemble

Buchanan Galleries

Dunedin Consort’s Associate Director Nicholas Mulroy leads Scotland’s only professional choir through music that invites contemplation and reflection in four of Scotland’s most beautiful acoustics. The season of Lent, a time of penitence for Christians leading up to Easter, has inspired composers over the centuries to write some of their most beautiful and heartrending music. In this a cappella programme, you’ll hear connections between renaissance polyphony, Francis Poulenc, and Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

The Quality of Mercy choral tour

Scottish Ensemble’s annual summer concerts bring vibrant music to open, light-filled venues across Scotland. In 2025 Scottish Ensemble are joined by soprano and composer Héloïse Werner – “a soprano of extraordinary range, tone and vocal abilities, possessing a seemingly inexhaustible expressive range” (Gramophone)

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Feb 15, 2025

The Law of Gravity with Scottish Ensemble

Mar 27, 2025

The Quality of Mercy choral tour

Jun 13, 2025

Concerts for a Summer’s Night with Scottish Ensemble

Dec 17, 2024

Children’s Messiah

Dec 17, 2024

Messiah

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