Mark Lomas, the gifted young Bermudian clarinettist who is already proving himself in musical circles, returns home this weekend to perform in a charity concert at the Anglican Cathedral.

Mr. Lomas, who is currently majoring in Performance at the famous Juilliard School of Music in New York, will join guest American soprano Doris Manville in a programme of music by Schubert, Faure Richard Strauss, Copland and Bernstein. All proceeds will go to the Cathedral Organ Fund. "The idea for this concert came about in quite a casual way,'' says Janice Moran, one of the organisers of the event. "Miss Manville was visiting Bermuda and attended a service at the Cathedral where her voice was heard soaring above all the others. She and Canon Francis consequently struck up a friendship and she was invited back to sing here. A group of us were asked to launch the project in aid of the Organ Fund and we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to invite Mark Lomas back to perform with her. He will be playing a solo which has been commissioned for him especially for this concert.'' The couple will perform one piece together -- Schubert's "The Shepherd on the Rock'' with clarinet obbligato. They will be accompanied by Karol Sue Reddington on the piano.

Mr. Lomas, who was a pupil at The Purcell School in England before going on to Juilliard, is already a member of their orchestra and, in January 1995, performed a soloist segment with them. In October of last year, he played first clarinet in the Juilliard Symphony to a packed audience at the school's theatre. In Bermuda, he was guest artist at the 1996 Heritage Day Concert with the Bermuda Philharmonic, and in November he was also invited to perform at the Lifetime Achievement Awards when the Bermuda Arts Council honoured Gary Burgess and Jay Bluck. His most exciting engagement to date, however, occurred in January of this year when he appeared as guest artist with the world-famous English Chamber Orchestra during the Bermuda Festival.

Ms Manville appeared as the soprano soloist at Carnegie Hall in Rutter's Magnificat under the baton of the composer and also in the Mozart Requiem with the New Yorkj City Symphony under Joseph Flummerfelt. She has appeared at Washington's Handel Festival and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Equally at home in opera, she rcently performed the role of Adina in "L'elisir D'Amore'' with New York's Dicapo Opera Theatre and has been a member of the Wolf Frap Opera Company. She has toured with Texas Opera Theater, singing both Mimi and Musetta in "La Boheme'' and with the New York City Opera Education Department.

Mrs. Moran says she is grateful that Mr. Lomas is so willing to give something of his talents back to the community. "I think we tend to overlook, or even take for granted, the enormous hard work and discipline that is necessary, even for the most talented person, to reach Mark's standard. We so often hear negative things about young black men, and here is a wonderful role model for all of our young people. I also believe that society in general, tend to look to sports figures rather than artists -- whether they are musicians, painters, dancers or whatever -- as heroes, so this is a reminder that the arts in Bermuda are providing some of the very best role models. His attainments, for a boy of only 19, are already truly remarkable.'' The concert takes place on Sunday, April 13 at 4 p.m.

Mark Lomas Doris Manville