CONCERTS in the West, the charity which brings rising stars of the chamber music scene to the West Country, opens the autumn season with four recitals by the Mela guitar quartet, bringing a “festival of music” to Bridport Arts Centre on Friday 6th September at 11.30am, for the shorter coffee concert, that evening at Ilminster Arts Centre at 7.30pm, Crewkerne Dance House on Saturday 7th at 7.30 and on Sunday 8th at the Church of St Roch at Pendomer near Yeovil at 3pm.

The quartet – Matthew Butten, Zahrah Hutton, Matthew Robinson and George Tarlton – will be playing a wide-ranging programme, including Saint-Saëns’ Bacchanale, Debussy’s Deux Arabesques, Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante Defunte, Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmilla Overture, Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances and works by Holst, Snowden and Gismonti.

Winners of the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America International Ensemble Competition 2023, the Mēla guitar quartet is known for imaginative, engaging programmes and original works, and for enthusiastically adding to the guitar quartet repertoire through adventurous arrangements of much loved orchestral works and their commissions of new music.

The Mela formed in 2015 as graduates of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music. They 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. Michael Butten and Zahrah Hutton joined founding members Matthew Robinson and George Tarlton in 2023.