Perth Chamber Music

07/08/2026

SUNDAY @ 3pm Dunkeld Cathedral - Caledonian Winds

Caledonian Winds is a chamber woodwind group based in St Madoes playing a range of musical genres. They play together to have fun, to make good music, to entertain the community, and raise money for charities.

They played in the festival for the first time last year and we are deighted to welcome them back. Their programme is suitable for all ages and covers popular classics, light jazz and even some ragtime!

The full programme is shown below:
Miller Magic – Glenn Miller (1904-1944),
arr. Lorenzo Bocci (b.1975)
Italian Polka – Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943),
arr. Francesco Leone (1887-1948)
The Young Prince and Princess from Scheherazade –
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908),
arr. Michael Young (b.1939)
Pineapple Rag – Scott Joplin (1868-1917), arr. Ken Abeling
Sailing By – Ronald Binge (1910-1979)
Academic Festival Overture
You can download the programme here: https://dunkeldcathedral.org/summermusicfestival/

Please join us to enjoy a one hour summer concert with this very talented group of muscians.

Entry is free so everyone can attend our concerts and enjoy hearing live music in this ancient cathedral. If you are able, we encourage a donation to help cover our professional musicans’ fees and continue to fund the festival. Any surplus will go towards maintaining the cathedral.

29/07/2026

A concert full of much loved Scottish folk songs old and new, with lots of opportunity to join in. We welcome David Boggon who will be playing the pipes.

Join us for an afternoon of music making, celebrating Scotland's rich cultural heritage of folk songs and melodies that span the centuries.

29/06/2026

29/06/2026

Wednesday July 1 @ 12pm in Dunkeld Cathedral, come and hear Karys and David, a fiddle and guitar duo from Perthshire, who have played together for around 10 years. They play an upbeat selection of both Scottish traditional, contemporary and original pieces for an exciting and varied performance.

26/05/2026

Read a review of their fabulous concert in St John’s Kirk staged by Perth Chamber Music in collaboration with Perth Festival of the Arts.

‘…Allegretto semplice from Arnold Bax’s First Quartet: like a Dvořák-like serenade, opulently coloured, it danced its way through an almost orchestral variety of sounds.’

Thank you to Ian Stuart Hunter for reviewing this concert.
You can read the full review https://perthchambermusic.org.uk/current_season/resol-quartet/.

24/05/2026

Yesterday afternoon we shared our first concert with Perth Festival of the Arts, featuring the superb Resol String Quartet. The concert in St John's Kirk had a carefully crafted programme to demonstrate and share the breadth and depth of string Quartet repertoire. An audience of 150 covering all ages from children upwards listened to J S Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3. The second movement features the immortal Air on a G string and there were smiles a plenty as the familiar melody rang out.

A treat was Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings in its original Quartet form. The purer form added a fragility and simplicity to the sound that made it even more moving.

A lively humoresque from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and a deft allegretto from Arnold Bax derived from an Irish folk tune ably demonstrated the classic Quartet sound. Whilst two mesmerising miniatures from Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw showed how modern sophisticated sound shapes can capture images and pictures in sound.

Perhaps the afternoon's most captivating.piece was left till last. Glasgow’s Donald Grant's revocation of a haunting Scottish legend in his folk-infused The Witch of Leanachan was simply stunning. It started with screeches and the wailing of the winds whipping around the base of Ben Nevis before the story was played out with Scottish themed gigs and structure.

According to local Highland folklore, the legend dates back to the mid-1800s. The story goes that a local woman cursed a man—often said to be a local doctor named William Kennedy. Fleeing the wrath of angry villagers who sought to hunt her down and burn her for witchcraft, she vanished deep into the Leanachan Forest. As the witch vanishes in the music a voice was heard singing in Gaelic. Slowly each instrument is replaced by a vocal part till the Quartet were left singing unaccompanied and their voices faded to silence. The audience held spell sound burst into thunderous applause.

The concert was a fabulous introduction to the entertainment and drama chamber music affords. Congratulations to Perth Chamber Music and Perth Festival of the Arts for such an imaginative concert, and to The Resol Quartet for a beautifully crafted programme and a simply outstanding performance.

08/02/2026

Dudok Quartet in rehearsal for this afternoon's 3pm concert at St John's Kirk. Tickets on the door. Come and enjoy (-: