Music at PaxtonThose of you who have not been to any of the events of Music at Paxton have missed/are missing a treat. This year the Festival is encouraging young talent by featuring two concerts by very young musicians from the Borders currently being educated at the Sage Gateshead and St Mary's Music School, Edinburgh. Last night we enjoyed two 18 year old pianists-one Peter Keenan a graduate of Hutton Primary School, a 17 year old Bassoon player, a violinist, a year younger and for me the two show stoppers, sisters, 15 and 12 on the Northumbrian Small Pipes and Harp respectively. The Northumbria pipes, in contrast to the Scottish Bag Pipes are gentle performers suited to peaceful folk music-the bag pipes are strident and martial to encourage wild charges across the battlefield or to persuade culture seeking tourists to hurry past outstretched specie containers as they charge up the Waverley Steps in Embra. If the mendicant pipers of Princes Street downsized to the Northumbrian Pipe or the Irish Uillean-and, this is the big and, learned how to play they could pull in the crowds and roll in the cash. If only.
Four concerts (by grown up musicians)left. Hurry. Tickets are going fast.And Sunday is sell out.
