Profiling performers and activities at this year’s ArtsFest.
On the scene: Luke Palmer-Divers
Already a performer on the local music scene, Luke Palmer-Divers is a pupil at Canterbury High School, and has already appeared at ArtsFest to an enthusaisdtic reception.
Luke started writing his own songs in late 2006. Since then he has played in multiple bands; however, he’s always found himself occasionally with more drive and determination than other band mates, resulting in a bold decision to go it alone.
After recording five songs privately for “The Acoustic Sessions”, Luke started gigging around Canterbury and the surrounding area.
Last year alone, Luke played at such prestigious events as ArtsFest, The International Kent Jamboree and Lounge on the Farm
With an E.P due to be released this year, the future looks bright for Luke Palmer-Divers. Keep an eye out: you saw him here first!
Profiling performers and activities coming up at this year’s ArtsFest.
Lords (and Ladies) of the Dance: Macmanigan Academy
Based in the Medway towns, with classes in Chatham, Gillingham, Aylesford and Faversham, the Macmanigan Academy of Irish Dancing is taught by ex-Riverdance cast members Nula and Kirsty Macmanigan.
The Academy was founded in 2001 by twin sisters Kirsty & Nula. Both girls have toured the world performing on cruise ships, in dance shows, pop videos and even in a film directed by John Henderson with Randy Quaid, Whoopi Goldberg, Roger Daltrey, Colm Meaney and Zoe Wanamaker, called ‘The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns’.
The school provides opportunities for children and adults to participate in showcases and competitions locally and all over the world. It has won many competitions including Great Britain titles in figure, and competes at world-class level in many countries abroad including Ireland, Italy, and Spain. They also dance regularly at festivals throughout Kent, including Rochester Sweeps Festival and the Faversham Hop Festival.
This is the second year that the dancers will appear at ArtsFest, and they’re looking forward to high-stepping and kicking their way into your hearts.
Profiling performers and activities appearing at this year’s ArtsFest.
Sedecim
Sedecim is a group of young singers aged between twelve and seventeen, all of whom are pupils at Kent College, Canterbury.
The group has only been formed recently, from present and ex-members of the well-established Kent College Choristers, winners of the ‘Outstanding’ award at the National Festival of Music for Youth and finalists in the Children’s Category of the BBC Choir of the Year 2008.
The members of Sedecim sing regularly in various local churches, both leading the worship in services and performing concerts for charity and fund-raising events. They have already had some success, reaching the finals of the Top Choir Kent Competition in March 2010.
This will be their ArtsFest debut, and it promises to be a great event: make sure you’re there!
The summer term is always a mixture of pleasure and regret: sadness that so many who have been a vibrant part of the musical life of the university are about to leave, but pleasure at being able to acknowledge some of them formally.
Last Friday saw the prize-giving for this year’s Music Awards prizes, and a chance for members of the staff and scholarship committee to recognise and thank particular students for their contribution to the year.
Winner of the Canterbury Festival Music Prize Maddie Harris received her award from Rosie Turner, Director of the Canterbury Festival, in acknowledgement of her outstanding contribution as a final-year student to Kent’s musical life.
Suzy Walton, last year’s Music Society Secretary, received the Colyer-Fergusson Music Prize for her contribution to organising music at the University from Jonathan Monckton, Chair of the Colyer-Fergusson Charitable Trust. It’s always a genuine pleasure for Jonathan to be able to present the award in honour of Sir James Colyer-Fergusson, who supported music at the University and after whom the Cathedral Concert every March, given by the University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, is named.
(l-r): Elizabeth McIver, Alanya Holder, Maddie Harris, Suzy Walton
The University Music Awards Committee Prize, an occasional award to recognise a special contribution to the year’s musical activities, went to Biosciences student Elizabeth McIver. Presenting her award was Dr. Dan Lloyd, a lecturer in the Biosciences Department, who was delighted to be able to recognise a musical student’s achievements from within his own faculty.
The University Music Prize, awarded to a returning student, went to Alanya Holder, the new Music Society President. She received her award from Dame Anne Evans, Patron of the Music Scholarship Scheme.
Each of these worthy winners has played a significant role in the continuing success of music-making here at the University, and hopefully they will continue to be involved in music after life at Kent.
To all those musical students who are leaving this year, and who have done so much to make the University’s music a success: ave atque vale. You will all be much missed.
Profiling performers and activities coming up at this year’s ArtsFest.
The Maridadi Singers: Photo credit: Robert Berry
Formed in 1997, the Maridadi Singers are a popular feature at the University’s ArtsFest. Conducted by the dynamic Anita Memmott, the group is a community of world singers who perform regularly including concerts in Canterbury Cathedral, the Canterbury Festival, the University of Kent’s Gulbenkian Theatre, and in London.
Anita is delighted to be back at ArtsFest again. ”Our group will be performing songs and drumming numbers from South Africa. We will also do some spirituals and songs from Israel/Palestine.Audience participation is encouraged and there’s always singing, drumming and dancing during our sets. Children usually have a great time with us!”
The Maridadi singers & The Strode Park Foundation are coming together for Arts Fest: Anita had the idea of a ‘Singing for Fun” group at Strode Park. Anita volunteers to facilitate the group once a fortnight and around sixteen residents regularly attend the sessions. The benefits are clear to see as the residents reminisce with songs from their past, and are always adding new songs to their repertoire.
The residents will be with the Maridadi for the first time and will perform a selection of their favorite songs at ArtsFest.
Whilst listening to the University Concert Band performing a suite from the score to the film Gladiator at a recent concert, I was struck anew by the allure that film music has for me. On browsing through my array of CDs later on, I realised that a large part of my listening library is devoted to film scores, from the spooky Classicism of Hannibal to the robust menace of Gladiator and Jurassic Park, the ethereal mystery of Solaris or the innocent jollity of Amelie.
What is it about film music that appeals ? On reflection, I suspect it might be the immediacy of the emotion it conjures, the instant creation of a mood or effect. Unlike traditional classical music, film scores don’t rely on musical form and architecture in the same way as, say, a symphony or a piano sonata. Film music, at least non-diagetic film music, is used because a director wants to enhance the emotion of a particular scene, and the music has to respond immediately. There is no room for traditional forms such as sonata form – exposition, development, recapitulation – which is all about presenting ideas, developing them, setting up tonal or harmonic relationships, and then providing a resolution in a coda. Think of the menace of the creeping semi-tone in Jaws, or the shrieking strings in Bernard Hermann’s music to Psycho: the effect is immediate.
Of course, diagetic music can do this as well: I’m thinking of that scene in Riidley Scott’s beautiful Hannibal, where the sound of the theme from Bach’s glorious Goldberg Variations seeps into the soundtrack, and the camera tracks across the room to reveal Lecter himself playing the piece as he muses on the letter he has just written to Starling. The piece is a favourite of Lecter’s, as we know from The Silence of the Lambs when he plays it on a tape-recorder in the prison-cage. The beauty of Bach’s melody stands in stark contrast to the environment in which it appears: Lecter’s private residence, or the cage-prison, and the figure of Lecter himself. (This video of Gould performing the Aria uncannily mirrors something of the tracking effect Scott uses in the film: I wonder if he’d seen it ?).
So what film music looms large in your library, and why ?
Be My Guest: an occasional series of guest posts and contributions. This week, a review of the recent Brodsky Quartet concert at the Gulbenkian Theatre by Danielle Broadbent. Danielle is a second-year Architecture student, and Music Scholarship Student. She plays the cello in the University Symphony Orchestra, and has also set up some additional string groups.
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There was a good turn-out at the Brodsky Quartet concert at the Gulbenkian on Wednesday 19th May.
Many people come regularly to see the group play, so the audience knew to expect a good evening. There was a really friendly atmosphere with even a group of young people from St. Edmund’s School among the audience. It’s so easy to get to that I was surprised: for just £7 for a Student Stand-By ticket, you would have to pay a lot more to get such a professional performance any where else!
The quartet plays standing up which is unusual but works really well. It allows for lots of movement, which means that the group sometimes looks like they are dancing as they play. The four players dip and dive, showing the spark between them as they work together in a really strong team. The first violinist is very expressive. His showy, tapping, style took him up to two metres away from the stand at times! Complimenting this is the unfussy, solid performance of the second violinist. The viola player is the spokesman of the group, introducing pieces with interesting facts and a few jokes. Beautifully interwoven with his approach is the elegant playing of the cellist. There is a definite sparkle within the group, as they use eye-contact and general movement to bring the music alive. Their playing is so well integrated that it sometimes feels like they are holding a musical conversation.
The first piece was Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C Minor (K546). We were told how Mozart took the examples of Bach and Handel and said ‘I can do better!’ The playing was crystal-clear with incredibly expressive playing from inside players. They made the most of the silences in the piece and looked like they had great fun playing the last movement.
The second piece was the Schumann Quartet in A Major, op. 41 no 3. 2010 is Schumann’s 200th birthday celebration year and last time the Brodskys came to the Gulbenkian earlier this year they also played his music. There was rapturous applause, and even cheers at the end of the piece!
After the interval, the concert continued with Tchaikovsky’s first quartet in D major. This came complete with regulation coughs and shuffles between movements! The first movement was stirring, the second beautiful and the third fascinating, but the masterful, boisterous and playful rendition of the final movement was definitely my favourite part. The clever programming and showmanship of the performers worked the audience up so that the applause left no-one in any doubt that an encore was necessary!
This turned out to be the group’s own arrangement of a piano piece from Schumann’s Album for the Young. The tired but jubilant quartet settled the audience down with this lovely, quiet piece rounding up the concert in style.
Written by Danielle Broadbent.
The Brodsky Quartet in 2008, playing the Brahms Clarinet Quintet:
It’s always exciting to discover a new composer whose musical language instantly appeals to you.
I can still recall the exact moment when I first heard a piece by Steve Reich: Vermount Counterpoint. I was immediately hooked. A pal at school had made a compilation tape of pieces for me, including Eight Lines, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, Six Pianos, and a piece by another Minimalist, John Adams, Grand Pianola Music. Now my listening library is dominated by these two composers.
I’ve recently discovered another Adams: John Luther Adams, whose hypnotic music occupies a similar niche. The beautiful soundscape of In a Treeless Place, Only Snow is a delicate gem.
Both performances by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, with other pieces streamed from WXQR, the classical radio station in New York’s website here as well.
(And continuing the leap into the Digital Age: you’re now using a media player on this blog as well. Blogs, virtual magazines, video-clips, floating media player: the modernisation continues!)
So, what music struck you like a thunderbolt early on and has stayed with you ever since ?
Because it does. Doesn't it ? Blogging about extra-curricular musical life at the University of Kent.
