“Per Ardua ad Solem……”

During its 20^th anniversary year last year Inverurie Music increased audiences for its intimate high-quality classical chamber concerts by 80%. The popular concert series kicks off this year with The Solem Quartet. Winner of the 2014 Royal Overseas League Ensemble Competition, the quartet was formed in 2011 at the University of Manchester. The quartet takes its name from the university’s motto “arduus ad solem”, meaning “striving towards the sun”.

Solem enjoys a busy concert schedule performing at venues both across the UK – including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bridgewater Hall and Holywell Music Room – and internationally. The group’s repertoire is extensive, spanning the period from early Haydn to a broad spectrum of living composers including Larry Goves, Anna Meredith, John Luther Adams and Emily Howard, whose quartet ‘Afference’ they performed in a BBC Proms Extra broadcast, live on BBC Radio 3.

Since September 2016 the Solem Quartet has been ‘Quartet in Residence’ at the University of Liverpool, and was also recently appointed ‘Ensemble in Residence’ at Aberystwyth Music Festival. They were also 2016/17 Park Lane Group Artists, Tunnell Trust Artists (selected in 2016), and from 2015-17 held the Junior Fellowship in Chamber Music at the RNCM.

The quartet features prominently on a CD of music by Richard Blackford, released on the Nimbus label in February 2019 – the first work on the disc, Seven Hokusai Miniatures, was written for the quartet in 2018. They have also recorded two CDs of 20th Century British music for Divine Arts.

They will be playing quartets by Haydn, Schumann, and Beethoven in the acoustically conducive environment of the Acorn Centre where audiences can rejoice in the proximity of the action and the quality of the sound. 

The concert, part of the Inverurie “In Tune” weekend, is at the new low price of £10.00 (Children and Students £1.00) on Saturday 28^th September 8.00pm. Tickets are available through Eventbrite or at “Up West, Arts and Crafts”, West High St Inverurie.