THE 2024 series of Concerts in the West opens on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th February with three concerts with the Perks Ensemble – Oscar, violin, and Elliott, viola, Perks and Alexander Ullman, piano, who have been part of Concerts in the West in previous years and this year are joined for the first time by cellist Sebastian Kolin.

This New Year series begins with the usual coffee-time concert at Bridport Arts Centre, followed by an evening performance at Ilminster Arts Centre and Saturday evening recital at Crewkerne’s Dance House.

The programme will be Mozart’s piano quartet No 2 in E-flat major, K 493, Hindemith’s string trio No 1 Op 34 and Brahms’ piano quartet No 1 in G minor, Op 25. The concerts are at 11.30am at Bridport and 7.30 at Ilminster on Friday 16th and 7.30 on Saturday 17th at Crewkerne

Sebastian Kolin studied at The Yehudi Menuhin School and completed his degree in Lugano and Cremona and his Advanced Postgraduate studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He was a member of the Heathcliff Trio until recently, winning first prize in the 9th International Johannes Brahms Chamber Music Competition in 2022.

Oscar Perks studied at The Yehudi Menuhin School and went on to read music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He then gained his master’s at the Royal College of Music. For five years Oscar was a member of the Dante String Quartet, with whom he gave numerous concerts around the UK and abroad, including the complete Beethoven and Shostakovich Quartet cycles.

Elliott Perks studied at The Yehudi Menuhin School and continued his studies as a foundation scholar at the Royal College of Music. He joined the Maxwell String Quartet with whom he won both First Prize and Audience Prize at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition in 2017. The quartet has toured internationally at major festivals and halls, mainly in North America and Europe.

Born in London in 1991, Alexander Ullman studied at the Purcell School, the Curtis Institute and the Royal College of Music. He won the 2017 International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht and has appeared with many orchestras and at venues around the world. In spring 2019, he received rave reviews for his first album on Rubicon, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, Prokofiev’s Six Pieces from Cinderella and Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Firebird suites. In spring 2022 a second album was released, featuring Liszt’s Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 2, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Litton, and the piano sonata in B minor.