Notes:

• This event is aimed primarily at school age players from year 7 upwards. University students also welcome.

• Players from any part of the north of England or southern Scotland are welcome to join the workshop. 

• The day is free to all participants thanks to a generous legacy from Catherine Scott, WYO’s much-loved wind tutor.

• Travel grants may be available to enable young players from outside the area to attend. Enquiries will be dealt with in confidence. Please e-mail admin@wyo.org.uk

• There is parking available at Booths Supermarket (3 minute walk from the centre)

• Lifts to and from Oxenholme Station can be arranged. The earliest train from the south arrives at 10.21 (coming from Lancaster, Preston, Manchester etc). If several people wish to arrive this way we can rejig the timings of the day accordingly.

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Ewan Millar

Ewan Millar is an oboist from Berkshire, recently having completed his final year reading music at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, graduating with first class honours. He has been playing for over a decade, beginning in the Berkshire Maestros charity music service in Reading, learning with Nicky Fairbairn. He now has lessons with Melanie Ragge, and is continuing with her at the Royal Academy of Music over the next two years for his Masters. In 2020 he reached the grand final of the BBC Young Musician Competition, winning the woodwind final along the way, getting to perform Oscar Navarro’s “Legacy” Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. Recently he had the opportunity to perform the Marcello Oboe Concerto with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the result of winning their U23 Concerto Competition. As a solo recitalist, he has performed at events around the UK like the Cheltenham Festival, Wooburn Festival, and Lake District Summer Music Festival. As well as oboe, he is a jazz pianist and singer, gigging regularly around Oxford.

Ewan is a Howarth artist, playing on a new Howarth XM, and is represented by YCAT. To help him undertake his Masters degree, he has received generous support from Drake Calleja, Help Musicians UK, the Charlotte Fraser Foundation, and the Zetland Foundation. He is grateful for their support of his career.

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Amy Thompson

Amy Thompson is a Musicians' Company Lambert Scholar at the Royal College of Music in London, generously supported by a Headley Trust Scholarship.

Amy is an enthusiastic chamber musician, having recorded multiple CDs of bassoon quartets for Hyperion Records. She has given recitals at St. John's Smith Square, the Lansdowne Club, International Anthony Burgess Foundation (as a duo with bassist Leon Bosch), Surrey Hills International Music Festival, and for the British Double Reed Society. Amy is a member of the Tailleferre Ensemble, whose debut album, "There are Things to be Said", was recently released by Uylsses Arts.

Amy has an interest in contemporary music and, in 2017, performed the world premiere of a work for unaccompanied bassoon by Andrew Mulhern at the National Portrait Gallery. She has performed concertos by Weber, Vivaldi, and Bach with orchestra as well as earning 2nd Place in the 2021 RCM Concerto Competition and winning the RCM Bassoon Prize.

Amy's orchestral work includes performances with the Brandenburg Sinfonia, Southern Pro Musica, Orion Orchestra, the Outcry Ensemble, and St. Paul's Sinfonia. She was awarded the bassoon place with the Chipping Campden Festival Academy Orchestra for 2022/23, and has taken part in the ENO Evolve and BBC Symphony Orchestra Pathway schemes. 

In addition to this, Amy is an experienced teacher, having tutored for the Junior RCM's Mini-Bassoon Programme, the British Double Reed Society, Uppingham School, Wind Serenades, and for five years with the Musicians' Company.

Amy would like to thank the George Drexler Foundation, the Countess of Munster Trust, Help Musicians UK, and the RSM for their support towards her studies.