Maxwell Quartet with Brìghde Chaimbeul & Linda Buckley

26 November 2023 19:00

We are delighted to present the award winning, “brilliantly fresh, unexpected and exhilarating” (The Scottish Herald) Maxwell Quartet on tour.

The Quartet is formed of four close friends, who grew up playing folk and classical music together in youth orchestras and music schools across Scotland.

Now firmly regarded as one of the finest young string quartets around, Maxwell Quartet are a group in high demand. Performing regularly across the UK, Europe and the USA, the quartet have wide-ranging projects and programmes, constantly expanding the string quartet repertoire. With a strong connection to their folk music heritage, the Maxwell Quartet sound is instantly recognisable.

The group have released two albums on Linn Records (2019 and 2021) featuring string quartets by Haydn alongside the quartet’s own compositions based on Scottish traditional folk music. Both received glowing reviews from international press. Their third album ‘Gather’ (released in 2023) is a musical foraging project, bringing together different elements of Scottish traditional music into new compositions for the quartet. It is an approach that unearths musical treasures and reimagined works.

For this tour the quartet will perform Haydn and Beethoven in Derry and Bangor, before being joined by Brìghde Chaimbeul and CMC Composer Linda Buckley in Belfast, for the NI premiere of Thar Farraige and other folk inspired works.

Chamber Music Scotland present "Thar Farraige (Over Sea)", a piece written by CMS Associate Artist / CMC Composer Linda Buckley for small pipes (Brighde Chaimbeul), string quartet (Maxwell Quartet), and electronics.

'Thar Farraige (Over Sea)' explores contemporary classical chamber music whilst embracing both Irish and Scottish traditional music and language, particularly songs of love and loss, connections to place, migration, and our idea of what home means.

This project will weave together many strands of my musical self to create a cohesive whole, an immersive experience for the listener drawing upon themes of emigration/migration, and our sense of home and how that can be carried with us.

- Linda Buckley