Wednesday’s lunchtime concert sees the continuing #Britten100 celebrations from the award-winning Kent College Choristers, as they bring his Friday Afternoons for voices and piano to the Colyer-Fergusson Hall at 1.10pm.
Kent College ChoristersThe Brodsky Quartet
Then, on Friday evening at 7.45pm, the Colyer-Fergusson Hall hosts a return visit from the Brodsky Quartet with its contribution to our tripartite centenary observance with music by Britten, Verdi and Wagner; there’s also music by Frank Bridge, Britten’s teacher, on the programme.
Finally, also on Friday evening, the University Chamber Choir will be marking the beginning of the Advent season with a sequence of carols and readings at the Church of St Damian and St Cosmus, Blean, in what seems to be becoming an annual tradition! Woven around the great Advent antiphons is a collection of carols old and new, poems and prose exploring the meaning of the Advent season.
Plenty to celebrate this week. More details on our online events diary here.
We’re delighted to announce that the Colyer-Fergusson Building was a winner at yesterday’s Wood Awards.
Wood you believe it…Image: Tim Ronalds Architects
The building won the “Commercial and Public Access” category at the Wood Awards yesterday evening, for its deployment of wood in construction, particularly the use of Douglas Fir. As Tim Ronalds Architects, designers of the building, state:
The walls and ceiling are completely lined in Douglas Fir Plywood, supported on a steel frame, and braced with solid Douglas Fir rails which stiffen the linings to avoid any unwanted resonance at musical frequencies, and provide acoustic diffusion. The acoustics can be modulated to suit music-making of all kinds with curtains that transform the interior into a soft, fabric-lined space, and retract behind the timber wall linings when not in use.
The design provides an unusual degree of flexibility for a hall with world-class acoustics…The retractable seating is finished with Douglas Fir fascias, continuing the material and rhythm of the hall lining panels.
The new Colyer-Fergusson concert hall
Read more about the building on the Wood Award website here.
We’re delighted to reveal that the Colyer-Fergusson Music Building has been shortlisted for the Wood Awards 2013, which celebrate excellence in design in wood.
It is one of thirty UK architecture, furniture and design projects that feature wood to be selected for the awards’ shortlist. The winners, including the main Gold Award, will be announced at a ceremony in London on 19 November hosted by the Worshipful Company of Carpenters.
This follows on from our RIBA National Award for architectural excellence earlier this year, when we were one of only two buildings in the Southeast to win an award and one of forty-three to win nationally.
Designed by Tim Ronalds Architects, the Colyer-Fergusson Music Building is notable for its wide range of innovative design features, which include the extensive use of wood.
Get your passports and boarding passes at the ready and join the University Music Theatre Society on a thrilling, whistle-stop tour of the world, including songs from Chicago, Lion King, Oklahoma, Annie and many more this weekend, as they embark on their showcase and extend the invitation to Come Fly With Me.
Performances are on Saturday 16th November at 8 pm, and Sunday 17th November at 4 pm / 8 pm in Darwin Missing Link; tickets are available from the Mandela building and are only £5 (the cheapest holiday yet!)
Fasten your seat belts, put your tray tables in the upright position and prepare for Come Fly With Me, as this is one journey you won’t want to miss. Here’s some of the Society in rehearsal this week…
Several of the University’s singing Music Scholars had the opportunity to learn from one of the country’s leading singers last week, in a masterclass with Dame Anne Evans.
Dame Anne put several singers through their paces, in arias by Mozart and Handel and a piece by Cole Porter, sharing tricks of the trade in front of the audience in the Colyer-Fergusson Hall; as she said, later that evening when appearing In Conversation, ”If you can sing Mozart, you can sing anything.”
Later on, she talked about her career on the national and international stage, looking in particular at her performances at Bayreuth under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, taking the audience from her first professional engagements through the various stages of her career, accompanied by some extremely rare recordings and footage of her in the role of Brunnhilde in scenes from Götterdämmerung.
When asked what her secret was to preparing herself before performances of the epic Wagnerian role, she answered candidly: ”A large bowl of pasta two hours before the performance, and bananas in the interval.” Asked about advice for young singers starting out: ”Start with Mozart,” and ”In auditions, always sing pieces that you are really comfortable with.”
Performers, in order: Kathryn Cox, Philippa Hardimann, Olivia Potter, Vicky Newell, Paris Noble, Marina Ivanova and Steph Richardson, accompanied by Deputy Director of Music, Dan Harding:
Kathryn Cox
Kathryn Cox rehearses with Dame Anne Evans
Dame Anne Evans rehearsing with soprano Kathryn Cox
Dame Anne Evans works with soprano Philippa Hardimann
Vicky Newell (soprano) and Olivia Potter (mezzo) in Mozart
Dame Anne Evans in masterclass with University scholars
Dame Anne Evans works with soprano Paris Noble
Paris Noble confers with Dame Anne Evans
Marina Ivanova sings Mozart
Soprano Marina Ivanova
Marina Ivanova and Dame Anne Evans
Steph Richardson sings Cole Porter
Dame Anne Evans rehearses with Steph Richardson in the masterclass
Photos from the first Watch This Space gig last month, with Dan Harding (piano), Gordon Wood (bass), Cory Adams (drums), Tim Pickering (sax) and special guest, the funky Chris Gray (tuba).
A sad loss to the world of contemporary music, the death of Sir John Tavener yesterday at the age of 69.
Sir John Tavener: 1944-2013
It’s become something of cliché to write Tavener’s music off as a sort of ‘holy minimalism,’ yet this is to glibly dismiss a music that tapped into a unique corner of the British musical landscape, and one in which the composer’s profound religious faith found articulation in a music that combined striking simplicity with chromatic colours and soaring lines. His music touched the heart of millions round the world when his serene Song for Athene was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales; his rhapsodic, ecstatic, spine-tingling The Protecting Veil achieved widespread popularity under the bow of Stephen Isserlis; his musical language – accessible, yet richly colourful – made him that wondrous thing, a contemporary composer who spoke to many, and gainsayed the argument that modern music appeals only to a tiny elite.
Listen to pieces such as The Lamb, or Today The Virgin, and hear the workings of Tavener’s unique language operating beneath the surface colours – proof, if any were needed, that modern music can touch the heart.
He leaves behind a body of work that affirmed his profoud faith, and affords a glimpse, for his willing listeners, into a realm of reflection and takes them perhaps one step closer to God.
Last week saw the (delayed) première of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels; Drama graduate and former member of Chamber Choir, Steve Graney, was in the audience…
BBC Concert Orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia, London Voices Conductor: Jurjen Hempel, Soprano: Claron McFadden Royal Festival Hall, Tuesday 29th October, 2013
BBC Concert Orchestra and soloists at the Royal Festival Hall. Image: Steve Graney
“Touring can make you crazy, Ladies and Gentlemen.”
In the case of Frank Zappa, touring can make you so crazy that you write a musical film in which you are played by Ringo Starr, Ringo’s chauffeur plays your ex-bassist and your former-saxophonist plays a Newt Rancher who falls in love with an Industrial Vacuum Cleaner.
Welcome to 200 Motels, a ‘surrealistic documentary’ of life on the road for Zappa and his band The Mothers of Invention; a musical satire of the tensions, groupies, chemical experimentations and absurdities that come with a rock & roll tour.
The orchestral concert version, forty-two years after its performance at the Royal Albert Hall was cancelled on grounds of obscenity, was finally unveiled to the UK in the Southbank’s ‘The Rest is Noise’ festival of twentieth-century music. It was a joyous spectacle (witnessing the London Voices wave light-up, rubber – how can I put this? – ‘recreational aids’ during a suite entitled ‘Penis Dimension’ is surely a once-in-a-lifetime experience). It also cemented Zappa’s status as a key twentieth-century composer.
Zappa’s versatility spans achingly beautiful string lines, challenging free jazz-reminiscent choral arrangements and even a majestic Bolero. The influence of Frank’s idols Stravinsky and Varèse is evident in the piece’s suspenseful harmonic dissonance and polyrhythmic, percussive atonality, but this in no way detracts from his individuality and unique approach to composition; I for one would pay good money just to glimpse a score that orders the horn players to jump on the spot.
The onstage rock band played second fiddle to the orchestra on this ‘Strictly Genteel’ classical occasion, although guitarist Leo Abrahams did treat us to a few tasty electric licks and there were some impressive Don Preston-style synth-keyboard skills to be heard.
Vocals and dialogue from the film also featured. These were stronger in some areas than others. Ian Shaw and Brendan Reilly, while vocally solid, didn’t recapture the raucous showmanship of Mothers frontmen and former-Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. However, Tony Guilfoyle, in FZ wig and moustache, brought Zappa’s surreal, self-parodying sense of humour to the fore magnificently. His accompaniment of the ‘I Have Seen the Pleated Gazelle’ segment (concerning the Girl-Newt Rancher-Industrial Vacuum Cleaner love triangle) with its composer’s justification that this was “a love story people could relate to” was dry, bizarre and hilarious.
I have nothing but admiration for soprano Claron McFadden’s breath-taking melodic and lyrical clarity. Any trained soprano who can sing, unfazed, lines like “If there’s one thing I really get off on it’s a nun suit painted on some old boxes” has my undying respect.
As the packed Royal Festival Hall leapt into standing ovation, we half-hoped our cries of “More!” might prompt an encore of ‘Peaches En Regalia’ or similar. But we were content with Jurjen Hempel lifting the mammoth conductor’s score triumphantly aloft, finally performed in full.
Would Frank’s words have been words of pride? “About f***ing time” might be nearer the mark.
Who knows. He was Only In It For The Money anyway.
Steve Graney
Because it does. Doesn't it ? Blogging about extra-curricular musical life at the University of Kent.
It is one of thirty UK architecture, furniture and design projects that feature wood to be selected for the awards’ shortlist. The winners, including the main Gold Award, will be announced at a ceremony in London on 19 November hosted by the Worshipful Company of Carpenters.
