Last updated 10:39, Saturday, 30 August 2008

A STORY about two musicians (percussionists) performing in a barn just cries out for a clever headline. Can you come up with one? It's just for fun - submit your entry below.

• View more pictures...

Barn stormer: O Duo in the barn at Cleator Moor

TWO percussionists, due to perform in this year’s Proms at the Albert Hall, came to play in a barn in Cleator Moor on Saturday for Cumbrian charity Sunbeams.

And the two young musicians, called O Duo, even amused the 50 strong audience by playing one piece on the metalwork and tyres of an old Massey Ferguson tractor.

O Duo are Owen Gunnell and Oliver Cox and they agreed to perform for free at the Cleator Moor barn. Among those supporting were members of the Rotary Club of Whitehaven, whose president, Gordon Southward, has chosen Annie Mawson’s Sunbeams as his charity cause for 2008.

O Duo performed works by Bach, Ravel and Chopin and their own marimba interpretations of jazz and classics.

They have performed concertos with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic etc, and appeared on TV and BBC Radio. They have received quite excellent reviews in The Daily Telegraph and The Times, and have something of a following on the fringe concert scene.

Alan Forster-Faircloth from the Rotary club said at the concert: “They were performing a concert in Cleator Moor before playing at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms in September and agreed to do a private, free show to invited guests in support of Annie Mawson’s Sunbeams Music Trust. They were terrific.”

Over the last year O Duo has given critically acclaimed recitals at Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room, recorded for Channel 4 TV and BBC Radio 2, given concerts in Paris and Madrid and appeared at the Newbury, Cheltenham, North Aldborough Festivals and now Cleator Moor.

The duo will be with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Proms on Wednesday, September 10 at the Royal Albert Hall and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

Owen Gunnell and Oliver Cox were both scholars at the Royal College of Music, graduating in 2003 with First Class Honours.

They have performed concertos with the BBC Philharmonic, London Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras, worked at Abbey Road and Sony studios, on television and film scores, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC TV.

In 2003 and 2004 the Duo won ‘Best Music Act of the Fringe’ at the Edinburgh Festival

O Duo’s repertoire, spans more than 300 years and is a mix of popular classics and accessible contemporary music played on two marimbas, vibraphone and a huge array of percussion.

The Duo have performed their own arrangement of Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in A minor several times and have started commissioning their own repertoire -– concertos and concert pieces by Stephen McNeff, Brian Wiltshire, Ken Johnson and Alan Hoddinott.