Largo Music Course Directors and Tutors

 

Fergus Kerr - Horn



Largo Music Tutor - Fergus Kerr

Having originally embarked upon a career in electronics Fergus is now a freelance French Horn player based in Glasgow. He is a frequent player with all of the Scottish orchestras, in particular the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and he also regularly travels to Gateshead to play at The Sage with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

As a chamber musician he is a founder member of the Tunnell Trust prize-winning wind quintet the Gliondar Ensemble. This group has toured extensively in Scotland and Ireland playing in venues as diverse as Aberdeenshire's tiny Monymusk Arts Trust and Dublin's National Concert Hall. Following a collaboration between the Gliondar Ensemble at GIO-Fest 2011, Fergus is now a regular player with the free improvisation group Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra.

In the field of folk music Fergus enjoys the wealth of crossover opportunities that Glasgow's thriving music scene has to offer and he makes regular appearances with a variety of groups in particular at the annual Celtic Connections festival. Notable examples of this have been the True North Orchestra and the Martin Green Machine which describes its output as “Genetically Modified Ear Food”. In January 2015 at Celtic Connections, Fergus was privileged to be part of the first Grit Orchestra: a group formed to give a live performance of Martyn Bennett's stunning final folk/dance crossover album, Grit. The phenomenal success of this opening performance has led to the orchestra playing at Womad and the Edinburgh International Festival in 2016. Further international appearances are in the offing for 2017.

Most recently, Fergus has been performing and recording with John Wallace's re-born Wallace Collection. As well as performing standard brass repertoire the group is exploring early brass music and instruments. In practical terms this means switching between several different instruments in each performance. Instruments range from Baroque and Natural horns through to the modern horn and include various two and three valve piston horns as well as a rare nineteenth century Clavicor.