Bishop Auckland Music Society
By Ellen Beaumont
BISHOP Auckland Music Society closes the 2025 season with a performance by Lumas Winds.
As always, children are welcome to attend free of charge and they will have the opportunity to
meet the performers. Remember to put the date in your diaries and we hope to see you there.
Lumas Winds’ programme includes:
Valerie Coleman Afro-Cuban Concerto (2001)
Darius Milhaud La Cheminée du Roi René op.205 (1939)
Anton Reicha Wind Quintet in Eb major, Op 88, No.2h
Leonard Bernstein Suite from West Side Story arr. Richard Price
Astor Piazzolla Histoire Du Tango arr. Ulf Guido-Schafer (1985)
Lumas Winds is a dynamic chamber ensemble based in London. Winners of the 71st Royal Over-
Seas League Mixed Ensemble Prize in 2023, Lumas are committed ambassadors for wind chamber
music and the rich variety of repertoire that it offers. The ensemble are currently Kirckman Concerts
Young Artists and Britten Pears Young Artists and in 2023/24 were Making Music’s Phillip and
Dorothy Green Young Artists.
Alongside performing the classics of the repertoire, Lumas enjoy exploring works not currently in
the canon but which deserve to be so. This is highlighted in the six hidden gems that will feature on
their debut album due for release in May 2024 for Champs Hill Records. The disc brings together
repertoire from every decade from 1960 to 2010 and includes three world premiere recordings by
Sally Beamish, Gavin Higgins and Elizabeth Maconchy.
Lumas won the Royal Academy of Music’s Historical Women Composers Prize in 2022 with its
performance of the latter, a major discovery from the ensemble’s visit to the Maconchy archive at
St. Hilda’s, Oxford.
Lumas have performed at the Wigmore Hall, and at the Corbridge, Ironstone and Winchester
Chamber Music Festivals. Amongst these collaborations have been performances of Poulenc’s Sextet
with pianists Huw Watkins and Benjamin Frith. They recently completed their tour of Scottish music
clubs as recipients of the prestigious Tunnel Trust award. Other upcoming engagements include a
tour with Concerts-in-the-West, the 2024 Lake District Summer Music Festival, and a concert at Kings
Place as Kirckman Concerts Young Artists, alongside concerts at several music clubs/societies across
the UK
Full details of all the programmes and artists who have performed for us this year, are on our
BAMS website: https://bvemv.orpheusweb.co.uk/BAMSWeb/bams.html
