The real Living Wage is the only rate calculated according to what people need to make ends meet. It provides a voluntary benchmark for employers that choose to ensure their staff earn a wage that meets the costs and pressures they face in their everyday lives. Since 2011 the Living Wage movement has delivered a pay rise to over 460,000 people and put £3 billion extra into the pockets of low paid workers.

Gail Irvine, Living Wage Scotland Manager said: “We’re delighted that Music at Paxton has become an accredited Living Wage employer. They join a growing movement of nearly 3500 employers in Scotland who together want to ensure workers have what they need to thrive. Our Living Wage employer network includes lots of smaller employers as well as larger and iconic brands like SSE, abrdn, Barrs, Mackie’s of Scotland, & D.C. Thomson. We hope to see many more employers following their example.”

The UK Living Wage is currently £12 per hour. This rate is higher than the government minimum for over 23s, which currently stands at £10.42 per hour. There is a separate London Living Wage rate of £13.15 per hour. The rates are calculated annually by the Resolution Foundation and overseen by the Living Wage Commission, based on the best available evidence on living standards in London and the UK.

Accredited Living Wage employers in Scotland span private, public and third sectors. SMEs make up 75% of the total number of employers and more than half of Scotland’s local councils are accredited. Find out more at www.scottishlivingwage.org/accredited

We regret to announce that due to the disruption of train services across the first weekend of our 2023 Festival, the Piatti String Quartet have very reluctantly been compelled due to personal circumstances to withdraw from the evening performance on Friday 21st July and the Family Concert on the morning of Saturday 22nd July.

However, we are very pleased to have been able to arrange wonderful musicians to take these spots instead. For more information on the performers, please see below.

Friday 21st July at 7.30pm
Dudok Quartet Amsterdam

Judith van Driel, Violin I
Marleen Wester, Violin II
Marie-Louise de Jong,  Viola
David Faber, Cello

Pérotin (arr. Dudok Quartet) Viderunt Omnes
Machaut (arr. Dudok Quartet) Kyrie from ‘Messe de Nostre Dame’
Gesualdo (arr. Dudok Quartet) Deh come invan sospiro
Mozart String Quartet No. 23 in F, K.590
Tchaikovsky String Quartet No. 3 in E-flat minor, Op.30

The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam is forging a reputation as one of the most creative and versatile quartets of its generation. With its ethos of “sharing the heart of music”, the Quartet believes that chamber music is an act of friendship to be shared directly with audiences and is committed to crafting unique and eclectic programmes that engage listeners in new and imaginative ways. The Quartet’s ethos can be summed up in their belief that “the music we play is never old or new, but always relevant and present.”

The Dudok Quartet has performed at many of the major European venues and festivals including the Vienna Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall, Beethovenhaus Bonn, De Bijloke, Barcelona Auditori, De Doelen, Festspiele Mecklenburg Vorpommern, BBC Proms, Heidelberg String Quartet Festival, West Cork Chamber Music Festival and the Amsterdam String Quartet Biennale, as well as appearing regularly at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Amsterdam Muziekgebouw. The Quartet made its US debut in 2018 at the Northwestern University Winter Chamber Music Festival, with other recent highlights including a New York debut at the Park Avenue Armory and digital concerts for the Washington Library of Congress and Fontana Chamber Arts Kalamazoo.

Simply revelatory. The players’ persistent delicacy, the freshly though-out balances between Instrumental lines, the communication of music so familiar as something new, was extraordinarily energising in its effect.

Saturday 22nd July at 10.00am

We are delighted that our Family Concert will now be led by Breanna Wilson & Sophie Joint.

Breanna Wilson is a fiddle player from Glasgow who has recently completed her fourth year at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She grew up playing trad music in Glasgow and has competed at the Fleadh multiple times. She has performed at various festivals such as Celtic Connections, Celtic Colours and IMBOLC and is also an avid composer.

Sophie Joint is a pianist from Glasgow with a background in Scottish and Irish traditional music. She has just finished her final year at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and has won a Danny Kyle Award at Celtic Connections and The Molloy Award at Birmingham Trad Fest. Sophie enjoys composing and arranging in a contemporary style with strong traditional roots and has performed at international festivals including Festival Interceltique de Lorient and Celtic Colours in Canada.

Sophie and Brianna were both finalists in the 2022 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician competition. They will introduce their programme from the stage.

Join our Artistic Director, Angus Smith, and some of our 2021 festival musicians to hear what is in store for this year’s festival.

16-25 July 2021, Paxton House, Scottish Borders.
Tickets are available now from www.musicatpaxton.online.red61.co.uk.

The team at Music at Paxton has been working very hard to counteract the very considerable challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. While we are taking nothing for granted, we are feeling optimistic that there will be a return to live music during the course of this year and we will certainly do all we can to present a full programme of events in the summer featuring an immensely exciting range of musicians. They are ready, eager and standing by!

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all those private individuals and organisations who have already generously donated to the Music at Paxton Appeal, assisting us enormously in negotiating these testing times. Your contributions have been of crucial importance to us and if any new visitors to this site, or anyone returning to it after an absence, would similarly be willing and able to make a donation then your support will also help us immeasurably in our journey towards the 2021 Festival.

We will be sure to keep you in touch as to our planning progress and we are working extremely hard to ensure that once we are back in the Picture Gallery all health and safety measures will be meticulously and comprehensively followed so that you fully may relax and enjoy listening to great musicians sharing the music they love.

It is with great sadness that the 2020 Music at Paxton Chamber Music Festival has been cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis. While we welcome expert opinion that suggests the overall situation may have improved by July, we must also acknowledge the likelihood that any return to restriction-free normality will be further down the line. With health and safety considerations for our audience, musicians, staff and volunteers being our top priority, the decision to cancel has therefore become unavoidable.

There has been extensive planning in the preparation of the 2020 Festival, not least the collaboration with many individuals and partnership organisations. We are especially conscious of the seismic impact that current measures are having on the livelihoods of musicians, and in response we are inviting all those due to appear this summer to return to Paxton at the earliest possible opportunity.

As a charity, Music at Paxton relies to a major degree on the generous support of individuals. In order to get through these extraordinary times, and to ensure that we can once again share the joy that live music brings in the unique Paxton setting, we need those contributions more than ever. We would be enormously grateful if you would consider making a donation to help us fulfil this aim.

On a more optimistic note, we are exploring the idea of presenting a concert in October which we hope will mark an end to the crisis. We invite you to return to this site for updates on our progress.

For now, all of us at Music at Paxton would like to send you our very warmest wishes and look forward to welcoming you back to the Festival in 2021.

Angus Smith,
Artistic Director