THE 56th Minehead and Exmoor Music Festival opens on Sunday (July 28) with an hour of music by two up-and-coming musicians chosen to give the traditional Young Artists’ Recital.

Soprano Ellen Steward, 15, and 13-year-old trumpeter Hetty Christopher are already known as high-performing contenders in the recent Taunton Festival of the Arts.

Ellen, also an accomplished clarinettist, is a specialist musician at Wells Cathedral School. Her wide-ranging programme includes arias by Bach, Schubert and Schumann as well as songs by Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Roger Quilter.

Ellen’s dramatic talent will also be apparent in arias by Johann Strauss, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Poor wand’ring one” from The Pirates of Penzance.

Hetty, a keen trumpeter from the age of five, has performed with the National Children’s Orchestra, Devon County Youth Symphony Orchestra and Devon Youth County Concert Band. She is currently working towards a diploma in trumpet performance.

Hetty also plays the cello in school string ensembles, and she dances with the Trull School of Dance.

She will play the popular trumpet concerto by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a young composer notably admired and encouraged by Mozart, and her programme will conclude with a Slavonic Fantasy by the little known German composer Carl Höhne.

The Young Artists Recital starts at 7.30pm in Minehead Methodist Church. Admission is free, but donations are invited and may be gift-aided.