Mēla Guitar Quartet

Church Window Mask

Friday 26 May 7.30pm

The award-winning Mēla quartet, known for their ingenious arrangements of orchestral works, perform a mixed audience-friendly programme.

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  • Getting here

    We are at 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, about 200 yards from Piccadilly Circus.

  • Part of St James’s Piccadilly Classical Programme.

    Doors 7pm. Event 7:30pm-8:45pm with short interval.

  • Access

    St James’s aspires to be a place where all can belong, and where every person’s gifts and identities are welcome and celebrated. We are working to improve the experience at St James’s in the church building and the online community. We have step-free access from the courtyard to the church, and a toilet for disabled people. The courtyard and Redemption Roasters coffee shop are wheelchair accessible. If you have special access requirements (e.g. wheelchair users) please contact concerts@sjp.org.uk

    • Programme:

    Camille Saint-Saëns Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah arr. Bovey

    Claude Debussy Deux Arabesques arr. Tarlton

    Andante con Moto

    Allegretto Scherzando

    Phillip Houghton Opals (1995)

    Black Opal

    Water Opal

    White Opal

    Maurice Ravel Pavane pour une Infante Defunté arr. Robinson

    Mikhail Glinka Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture arr. Tarlton

    Interval

    Wolfgang Mozart The Marriage of Figaro – Overture arr. Tarlton

    Laura Snowden My Clock is Broken! (2019)

    Darius Milhaud Brazileira from Scaramouche arr. Robinson

    Brubeck/Desmond Brubeck Suite

    Claude Debussy Clair de Lune arr. Tarlton

    Bizet/Goss Carmen Fantasy

    Segudilla

    Gypsy Song

    “The Mēla quartet play my work Opals with brilliance and poetry. The music shines and shimmers with sparkling clarity…wonderful music making!” Phillip Houghton, Composer

    The Mēla Guitar Quartet takes their name from the Sanskrit word for ‘Festival’. Their concerts celebrate an engaging and imaginatively wide-ranging programme of original pieces for guitar quartet and their own ingenuitive arrangements.

    The quartet formed in 2015 as graduates of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music. They quickly became International Guitar Festival Young Artists 2015/16, then Park Lane Group young artists 2018/19 and Royal Over-Seas League chamber music finalists 2019.

    The quartet’s recordings have received critical acclaim, while notable performances have included the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, Kings Place Hall One, Barbican Centre’s Milton Court, St. George’s Bristol and Westminster Abbey.

    In 2019 the quartet embarked on an 8 concert tour of China, including Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, Changsha concert hall and Tianjin Grand Theatre.

    The quartet are enthusiastically adding to the guitar quartet repertoire through their adventurous arrangements of much loved orchestral works and their commissions of new music, including My Clock is Broken! by Laura Snowden, which is being performed this evening.

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