Dolgellau Music Club is looking ahead, following two very enjoyable concerts at the start of the new season.

On Friday, 5 December at 7.30pm, the stage will be set in Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor for the club to host two rising talents currently based in London. They are the Scots oboist Ewan Millar, and the Welsh pianist Tomos Boyles. Both of these musicians have already achieved a remarkable level of success.

Ewan's academic prowess (he obtained first-class degrees in music from Oxford in 2022 and from the Royal Academy in 2024) has been more than matched by his achievements as a performer. In 2020 he won the woodwind final of the BBC Young Musician Competition, advancing to the Grand Final and giving what was described by The Guardian as an 'exemplary, richly shaded account' of Navarro’s 'Legacy' Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic. Examples such as these of his playing can be found online, on his own YouTube channel.

Since graduating he has been working around the UK as a freelance musician with various prominent orchestras, playing principal with the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, and London Concertante, as well as second seat with the Philharmonia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Oxford Philharmonic.

Like Ewan, Tomos graduated from Oxford in 2022 with a first-class degree in music, and he is now a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy under Professor Rustem Hayroudinoff. He was recently awarded the academy’s prestigious Bicentenary Scholarship.

His career so far has led him to perform at numerous prestigious venues including Sinfonia Smith Square, St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square, King's Place, Wigmore Hall, the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, St David’s Hall in Cardiff, and the Wales Millennium Centre. Past awards include solo first prizes at both the Urdd Eisteddfod and the Wales International Piano Festival, as well as the prestigious Blue Ribband at the National Eisteddfod.

For their concert in Dolgellau, the duo have chosen a wonderfully rich and varied programme of a dozen or so pieces by composers such as JS Bach, Alessandro Marcello, Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Lili Boulanger, Ravel, Barber and Finzi.

The performance will open with two of Benjamin Britten's well-loved Six Metamorphoses. Ewan believes strongly in 'creative programming and thoughtful audience engagement': he and Tomos will surely provide a memorable and deeply satisfying evening's music-making. The club would like to thanks the Countess of Munster Musical Trust for supporting both players, and for sponsoring this event.

Dolgellau Music Club presents concerts of high quality and varied content, mostly classical, but with some folk/jazz/ethnic elements.

The performers are all of professional status and calibre, many with international reputations. Some are at the beginning of their careers, and go on to achieve a high profile not long after playing for the club. A notable example of the latter is the Belcea Quartet, who played in Dolgellau in February 1999 (including a riveting performance of Bartok's 3rd String Quartet), and quickly became one of the most sought-after quartets in Britain.