A marvellous end to the academic year at the University, our annual Summer Music Week festival saw a packed programme of events bidding a musical adieu to the year.
From the opening Bond and Beyond with the Big Band, String Sinfonia and Festival Voices, through the Big Band gigging at Deal Bandstand, two student lunchtime recitals, Minerva Voices and Consort at the Cathedral Crypt, and concluding with Chorus, Orchestra, Cecilian Choir, Concert Band and student soloists in the closing gala, it’s been an action-packed week showcasing the extra-curricular music provision here at Kent in vibrant, robust form.
(Here’s a small snapshot of the events over the course of the festival; many more can be found on our Facebook Group).
Congratulations and huge thanks to everyone who took part, to all the performers, to the various donors and music supporters, and to the audiences who came to support the concerts. It’s been a great year of music-making – we’re already looking forward to the next!
A unique experience, in a specially crafted incarnation of Bryars’ seminal piece, the students, a combination of Music Performance Scholars and Award Holders, including students reading Law, Economics and Chemistry, rose to the occasion in a piece that requires a quite different set of skills, using a modular score, stopwatches, and a pre-recorded (and rhythmically uneven) vocal track against which to play.
After the concert, Trish and Ross stayed on to work with some of the students exploring improvisation, rhythm, and the physicality of the ‘groove;’ players included several of this year’s Music Award Holders.
This year’s annual Colyer-Fergusson concert, in honour of Sir James Colyer-Fergusson, saw the combined ranks of students, staff, alumni and members of the local community coming together to present Brahms’ inventive Symphony no.4, alongside Fauré’s Requiem, performed to the mark the centenary this year of the composer’s death.
Conducted by Your Local Correspondent, and joined by soprano soloist Julie Bale and baritone soloist Ben Bevan, the concert was a resounding success, greeted with an enthusiastic ovation from the audience who stood and applauded as the final notes of the Requiem receded down the Nave.
Her exam included repertoire by Telemann, Enesco and Chopin, and took pace at St Peter’s Methodist Church in Canterbury, accompanied by first-year Music Performance Scholar, Ronja Haller.
Charlotte will be playing in Concert Band next week in the spring gala concert – many congratulations to her on her success.
A morning devoted to Faure’s sublime Requiem was followed by an afternoon working on Brahms’ epic Symphony no.4 with the orchestra alone.
It was a pleasure to welcome back a few familiar faces as some alumni who will be joining us for Saturday’s concert came back to Colyer-Fergusson to take part in the rehearsal.
Directed by Floriane Peycelon, the ensemble delivered a programme focusing primarily on women composers, with a scintillating Suite for Strings by Libby Croad; a movement from the wonderfully colourful Piano Quintet by Louise Farrenc, for which the ensemble was joined by first-year pianist, Ronja Haller; an enigmatic compositional response to Tallis’ If Ye Love Me by local composer Juliet Lewis (who also conducted the piece); before the programme closed with a full-blooded string orchestral ‘reimagining’ of music from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, with the closing Lament featuring final-year student, Jack Chan, on solo viola.
A great programme and an enthusiastic audience; many thanks to the church’s Coffee Concert series for welcoming us.
