Festival Artists

Maxwell Quartet

The Maxwell Quartet consists of four close friends who grew up playing classical and folk music together in youth orchestras and music schools across Scotland. The group officially began in 2010 at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where its founding members met as postgraduate students. The very next year, the Quartet was appointed as the Conservatoire’s Young Artists in Residence and selected for Enterprise Music Scotland’s Residency Programme.

The Quartet has developed a unique, fresh and genuine voice of its own in the world of chamber music. In 2017, the Quartet received the First Prize and Audience Prize at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition, and their performances were hailed as ‘superb storytelling by four great communicators’ by The Strad and as ‘brilliantly fresh, unexpected and exhilarating’ by The Herald.

Now based across the UK and touring regularly in Europe and the United States, the Quartet’s performances are set apart by the tribute they pay to their Scottish folk music heritage. From 2019 to 2021, the Quartet is Associate Artist at both the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Music at Paxton festival.

Always keen to take the possibilities of the string quartet in new directions, the Quartet has worked with musicians including Kari Kriikku, Jonathan Kelly, Benjamin Grosvenor, David Watkin, Anna Meredith, Herman Kolgen, Lunir and the Danish String Quartet. The Quartet has studied with Hatto Beyerle of the Alban Berg Quartett and members of the Endellion String Quartet.

Juliette Lemoine

Named ‘One to Watch’ by Chamber Music Scotland (2023), Juliette Lemoine is a Scottish cellist exploring and redefining the instrument’s role within contemporary Scottish Traditional Music. Her debut album ‘Soaring’, supported by the Beatrice Huntington Award for cellists, launched with a sold-out headline performance at Celtic Connections (2023), and was long-listed for the Scottish Album of the Year Award (2023). Her emotive compositions weave through Scottish Traditional, Western Classical, and Jazz genres in a unique instrumentation of cello, tenor saxophone (Matt Carmichael), piano (Fergus McCreadie), and fiddle (Charlie Stewart), to create a highly personal new voice. Juliette also performs in a duo with tenor-guitarist Chris Amer; recent highlights include their headline Celtic Connections show (2024), performing at London Jazz Festival (2024), and supporting LAU at King’s Place London (2024); and the newly formed female powerhouse trio Swinging on Birches with Madeleine Stewart (fiddle) and Heather Cartwright (guitar and voice).

Bubblyjock Collective

The Bubblyjock Collective is an ensemble dedicated to celebrating the music of neglected Scottish composers. The collective focus on music written during the 19th and 20th centuries by people born in Scotland or with a strong Scottish cultural connection. Composers like Ronald Stevenson, Erik Chisholm, Buxton Orr, Marie Dare and Isobel Dunlop (to mention but a few) may be known by some aficionados of the Scottish classical scene, but in general their music is underperformed and much of it lies unknown in archives and libraries across the country. We aim to revive this music – to take it out of the archives and back into people’s ears!
The Bubblyjock Collective performs programmes featuring Scottish art song, instrumental music for piano and accordion, as well as new works commissioned for the ensemble. This mixture of songs and instrumental music emphasises the links to wider Scottish culture – poems by Scottish poets like Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob, and William Soutar are brought to life in a rich musical accompaniment which places the Scots language to the foreground. Landscape and places are conjured up by pieces like Ronald Stevenson’s South-Uist Folk Song Suite, and Claire Liddell’s Five Orkney Scenes. And new music by contemporary composers reflects a modern Scotland, with fresh ideas and sounds that look to the future.
We aim to shine a new light on this repertoire, not as an afterthought or token gesture - “look, Scotland has classical music too!” - but as an integrated and better-understood part of the music scene in Scotland.

Peaks

Peaks is the musical partnership between violinist George Smith and cellist Duncan Strachan, founder members and one half of the internationally-renowned Scottish chamber ensemble the Maxwell Quartet.

Incorporating both electronic and acoustic mediums, Peaks weaves together an eclectic range of musical strands, with much of the duo’s work focusing on aspects of Scottish traditional culture, recontextualised in a post-minimalist and post-modernist aesthetic. Smith and Strachan have collaborated with cinematographer Herman Kolgen, theatre company Cryptic, London Studio Centre Dance, composer Anna Meredith, piper Brighde Chaimbeul, and many more, with performances of their own music across the UK at major venues and festivals, and further afield in Denmark, Norway, and France.

Their 2017 project, A Concert in A Coire, saw the duo collaborating with Scottish electronica artist Architeq, for a site-specific performance composed on location at Coire Lagan on Skye, one of the UK’s most dramatic scenic locations. They composed a new work based on Skye’s landscape called Cladach/Mullach for the Magic Mountain festival in Portree in 2024.

Neil Sutcliffe

Neil Sutcliffe is an accordionist and folksinger from Stirling, Scotland. He performs as a soloist and in several different ensembles and bands. His roots are in the traditional music scene in Scotland, coming from a family of musicians and growing up surrounded by folksongs, ballads, pipe tunes, and ceilidh dancing. As a folksinger, he has been deeply influenced by singers such as Geordie McIntyre, Alison McMorland, Pete Seeger, Adam McNaughton and of course his parents Jo Miller and Steve Sutcliffe. He has a particular interest in political protest songs and humorous songs.

Neil studied Classical Accordion with Djordje Gajic at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, graduating with a First Class BMus (Honours) degree in Performance, and receiving several awards for his academic work and research into the history and contemporary accordion scene in Scotland. As a classical musician, he focuses on researching, performing and promoting neglected Scottish composers and music relating to Scottish history, language and place. He is passionate about bringing this music to new audiences, and making classical music accessible and engaging to all. He is a co-founder of The Bubblyjock Collective, a chamber music ensemble dedicated to Scottish Classical repertoire.

Alongside his purely musical work, Neil regularly collaborates with Storytelling and Theatre productions, both as a Musical Director and as a Storyteller in his own right.

Fergus McCreadie

Blending jazz with the spirit of Scottish folk, pianist Fergus McCreadie crafts music inspired by his homeland’s breath-taking landscapes. His sound transcends genre, connecting deeply with audiences worldwide. Released to instant critical acclaim, Fergus’s 2022 album ‘Forest Floor’ (Edition Records) catapulted him into the international spotlight. The album topped the UK Jazz & Blues charts, prompted sold-out performances across the UK, praise from BBC 6Music, The Times, NME and earned him a 2022 Mercury Prize shortlist nomination, the 2022 Jazz FM Instrumentalist of the Year Award as well as the 2022 Scottish Album of the Year Award - the first jazz artist ever to be awarded the prize.

Fergus’s latest album ‘The Shieling’ (Edition Records) drew on the wild, elemental beauty of the surroundings to create a deeper sense of space and openness that proved an immediate success with critics and audience alike.

Fergus also made his film score debut in 2025, with a significant contribution to the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s film ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ starring Denzel Washington & A$AP Rocky, which the trio recorded at the Manhattan Centre in New York. A huge champion of Fergus’s music, Spike Lee also used Fergus’s song ‘Windshelter’ in a tribute video to Carmelo Anthony filmed for his induction into the NBA Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Fergus McCreadie is an official Yamaha Artist, and Chamber Music Scotland's Artist in Residence 2025/26. 

Lochaber Music School

Lochaber Music School was founded in the early 1990s by the inspirational cello teacher Audrey Scott. Established in the West Highlands of Scotland, the school was created to provide high-quality musical education to young people in a rural area, offering opportunities that might otherwise have been difficult to access. Audrey Scott’s vision combined strong classical training with a nurturing, community-focused approach, and the school has since grown into an important centre for both classical and traditional music, with regular lessons, ensembles, and performance opportunities forming a core part of its work.

Over the decades, Lochaber Music School has built a reputation for developing talented musicians who go on to further study and professional careers. Notable former pupils include violinist Donald Grant, multi-instrumentalist Megan Henderson, and festival director Duncan Strachan.

Sgo

Sgo is a musical partnership between sisters Steaph and Ciorstaidh Chaimbeul, originally from the Isle of Skye, Scotland. They are Chamber Music Scotland’s Ensemble in Residence 2025/26.

The duo explores the expressive capabilities of the harp, accordion, and voice to create original compositions. Their work draws on their Gaelic upbringing and identity, blending chamber music, sound design, and storytelling. Together, they have performed across the UK and internationally, including appearances at Blas Festival, PanCeltic Festival, and HebCelt Festival. They are both currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Rachel Groves

Rachel Groves is a lever harpist and composer from Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Rooted in Scottish traditional music, she draws on influences from jazz, classical and global folk music styles as vehicles to explore the rich textural and rhythmic possibilities of the instrument. A graduate of Berklee College of Music (Valencia) and the University of Edinburgh, she is curious about the harp’s role as a contemporary voice in collaborative and intercultural contexts.

She received the award for best original composition from Maeve Gilchrist at the Princess Margaret of the Isles Memorial Prize for Senior Clarsach, and the Iain McLeod Young Composer’s Award from the Edinburgh International Harp Festival.


Alongside her work as a harpist and composer, Rachel’s freelance career includes leading the Scolty Harp Ensemble in North East Scotland and teaching both privately and with organisations such as Scottish Culture & Traditions.

Georgina MacDonnell Finlayson

Georgina MacDonell Finlayson is a Scottish musician, composer, sound artist and community arts practitioner. She enjoys a varied portfolio of composing, performing and teaching in both classical and traditional styles, and has a particular interest in collaborative, cross-genre and multi-disciplinary performance. Raised in a remote glen in the North East of Scotland, her creative work is often influenced by her experiences of landscape, nature and traditional culture. She is fascinated by the ways in which traditional music and culture are so deeply connected with landscape and language, but also how this connection can be found in the fusion of classical and traditional music across the world. This fascination is a strong research and artistic thread in her creative practice, but in particular, how music can bring us closer to landscape and nature and address our urgent need to live sustainably.