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The Research Ensemble - Fergus Kerr

Fergus plays the French Horn.  Having originally embarked on a career in electronics, he is now much in demand with all of the Scottish orchestras and also heads south of the border to Northern Sinfonia and Manchester Camerata from time to time.  He is a founder member of Tunnell Trust Prize-winning group the Gliondar Ensemble (wind quintet). 

This group spend the majority of their time touring small venues in Scotland and Ireland and have been champions of twentieth century music: enthusing about and performing composers such as Gyorgy Ligeti, Samuel Barber and Heitor Villa-Lobos whose works are rarely seen outside the city. 

They have also commissioned new work – David Fennessy’s “The Art of Falling Apart”; and worked with composer Elaine Agnew on a children’s compositional workshop.

Fergus also turns his abilities to non-classical music: he is a founder member of the RYLO Ensemble. 

This group appears on the outside to be a standard orchestral, eleven-piece brass ensemble, however a jazz rhythm section has been added and the majority of the players are jazz performers.  Virtually all of the music the group plays is either newly composed or newly arranged; and in performance the music retains an organic quality: there will be often extensive sections where both the solo line and the accompaniment are almost entirely improvised.

Beyond Classical and Jazz forms, Fergus also plays with several folk and pop groups: stemming from the Celtic Connections festival, he continues to work with musicians such as Eddi Reader, Justin Currie and Blazing Fiddles; and he is currently working on a new project with the stunningly creative accordion player Martin Green.


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