AUGUST witnessed the critically acclaimed ‘I, Culture Orchestra’ (ICO) international summer tour. The project, now in its third year, saw us perform concerts at prestigious festivals such as Edinburgh International Festival, Baltic Sea Festival and Festival International de Piano in L Roque d’ Antherón.

Our group of selected young outstanding musicians from Poland and the Eastern Partnership member states worked extremely hard during the residency and on the tour – rising to the exciting challenge.

The 10-day residency based in Gdansk, Poland gave young musicians the opportunity to train alongside tutors from the UK and for us all to rehearse and prepare for the ICO tour.

As the BSO rehearsed ahead of their busy BSO weekend at Pier Approach, Bournemouth, we kicked off the tour in Gdansk, before moving on to Kassel, Germany, then to the South of France.

We spent several days in Edinburgh rehearsing for our exciting performances at the Edinburgh International Festival. This included my debut as well as the ICOs.

The festival had a great atmosphere and audience, with the programme well received by them.

The final concert of the tour was held in Sweden at Stokholme Baltic Sea Festival which was also spirited and supported by yet another great audience.

We did a nice programme with the works of Khachaturian, Azerbaijan composer Karajev and Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin which was performed by Simon Trpceski who we know really well.

All the concerts on the ICO tour were a huge success with wonderful support from all of the audiences.

As the BSO embarked on their Autumn Classic tour across South and South West, September saw my debut performance with the Russian National Orchestra (RNO) in Moscow as part of the annual RNO Grand Festival.

This was not easy for me to travel to Moscow at this time but I really try to think that musicians and artists shouldn’t be influenced by politics and all the difficulties that are happening at the moment. The concert was a great success – it went really well.

My soloist, this time performing on his birthday was once again pianist Simon Trpceski. After a break in Kiev I headed back to Poole for the end of September for the start of rehearsals ahead of the busy October opening of the BSO’s 2014/15 concert seasons in Bournemouth, Poole, Exeter, Bristol and Portsmouth.