News

Harlequin welcomes composer and arranger, Patrick Rimes

28th January, 2015

Patrick was Music Director on S4C’s Nadolig Bryn Terfel in December and arranged the tracks for Bryn and his guests for the one-off TV Christmas Special. Guests included ground breaking folk five-piece Calan, of which Patrick is also a member, playing the fiddle and pipes and contributing to the vocals. At 22, this was Patrick’s first solo project as arranger and Musical Director for TV.

Patrick is currently preparing for a Master’s degree in Performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, his principal study, in a classical sense, being the viola. Before that, he graduated from the University of Leeds, which included an Erasmus exchange year at the Janacek Academy, Brno, Czech Republic, where he specialized in conducting.

With so many strings to his bow, Patrick is continuing to develop his conducting skills and as one of the founders of the North Wales Camerata, will be working with the ensemble and guest conductor and masterclass leader, Gareth Jones, in two open workshops in Bangor on the 6th March for Bangor’s new music festival. A concert with the North Wales Camerata and Patrick as conductor will follow on the 7th March.

As a traditional instrumentalist and member of Calan, he has recorded three studio albums and helped place Welsh music on the map at many of England’s biggest folk festivals including Cambridge, Sidmouth and Cropredy. He has toured with Calan in Europe, the USA and Mexico and worked with the Cerys Matthews band  at the World Music Expo, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York and the BBC Proms.