Category Archives: Keeping It Real: reviews.

Concerts and events reviews.

A class Apart: trombone quartet are top brass

Celebrating a decade of support from Furley Page Solicitors, this year’s Lunchtime Concert season got off to an heraldic start with a visit from the award-winning trombone quartet, Bones Apart.

Bones Apart
Bones Apart

A well-conceived programme blended an array of musical styles, all inspired by the works of Shakespeare, ranging from the Baroque to Bernstein. Three movements from Purcell’s The Fairie Queen opened the concert, including a light-footed arrangement of the ‘Chaconne.’ There was also some warm, lyrical playing in Mendelssohn’s incidental music to  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the melody originally appearing in the French horn in the orchestral version here beguilingly played by Jayne Murrill.

The group showed their sassier side with Duke Ellington’s jazzy Such Sweet Thunder, which had the group demonstrating a deft, rhythmic jazz feel and crafted wah-wah mute-playing, all solidly underpinned by Lorna Macdonald. The ensemble then showed some astonishingly deft playing in Tchaikovsky’s incidental music to Hamlet.

Written for an RSC production, Jason Carr’s Poem Unlimited combined five separate motives, each reperesenting one aspect of Polonius’ famous pompous litany of theatrical characteristics, where each facet – comedy, historical, romance, tragedy – was given a separate thematic idea, all woven together. The piece had great rhythmic vitality and some richly colourful sonorities.

A luminary of British jazz, the late John Dankworth’s ‘If Music Be The Food of Love,’ demonstrated a wonderfully lyrical, jazz flavour in an arrangement by Helen Vollam, apparently done with the blessing of the great man himself who came to hear its first performance: an accolade indeed.

The group finished with two pieces from Bernstein’s West Side Story; ‘One Hand, One Heart’ had a rapt audience holding its breath as the group wove a magically lyrical portrayal of the doomed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, an intimacy then thoroughly and riotously dispelled with ‘Gee, Officer Krupke,’ which was brash, lightning-fast and delivered with great panache, awash with glissandi  to the delight of an enthralled crowd.

The players were on magnificent form, demonstrating some virtuosic skills combined with instinctive ensemble playing that had the four players working as one. A magnificent way to begin the new season and to celebrate ten years of music-making with Furley Page: top brass.

l-r: Nicola Ingram (Music Society Secretary), Sarah Davies (Society Treasurer), Peter Hawkes (Senior Partner, Furley Page), Susan Wanless, Chris Gray (Society President): image credit Mick Norman
Furley Page logo
Sponsors of the Lunchtime Concert series

Top of the Hops: University musicians celebrate with Shepherd Neame

It’s the season when the hop harvest has been gathered in, traditionally a time for celebration and thanksgiving, and musicians from the University were once more on-hand to help with the festivities.

Shepherd Neame, based in Faversham and Britain’s oldest brewery, each year holds a Hop Blessing, which combines a religious service with a celebratory agricultural message, giving thanks for the harvest, upon which traditionally the livelihood of many have depended. Conducted by Deputy Director of Music, Dan Harding, a small vocal consort from the University sang at the service, including Finzi’s evergreen ‘My Spirit Sang All Day,’ before the entire company retired to a nearby oast-house for a hop-pickers’ lunch.

Image courtesy of Shepherd Neame

The consort also performed a pre-prandial selection of madrigals and rousing drinking songs, while music during the remainder of the lunch came from Triskele, a folk-band led by third-year student, Fred Holden.

As Tom Falcon, Production and Distribution Director with Shepherd Neame, pointed out in his welcome, the brewery buys 95% of its ale hops and 80% overall from Kent. This is one example of the profound links between Shepherd Neame and the local community, with the brewery plugged right into the heart of Kent’s critical farming industry. This relationship is three hundred years old and one also celebrated at the service. His speech also thanked the members of the University for their contribution to the event.

At your service: University Vocal Consort

The musicians responded to the truly celebratory nature of the occasion with some fine music-making for a unique event – I can’t think of anything else like it. Here’s to another successful harvest: and to many more!

Images

High societies: at the Freshers’ Fayre

With Freshers’ Week in full swing, the campus is a-swarm with life, and yesterday’s Freshers’ Fayre saw all the student societes attempting to seduce new (and former) students into the myriad temptations on offer by each society as part of the University’s rich and dynamic campus life.

High Society!

The Music Society and Music Theatre Societies spent the day promoting their respective groups to the thronging masses passing either through the Eliot marquee or the Jarman Piazza gazebo.

The Music Society has a brand-new look this year, trending rich purple colourways [is this a fashion column ?] and a new society logo. Pictured left standing their ground amidst the throng on the front-line: Ben Walker (Band Librarian), Chris Gray (President), Matt Bamford (Chorus Rep), Hannah Lilley (Chorus Librarian), Kathryn Redgers  (Orchestra Libraria), Nicola Ingram (Secretary),  Rachel Richardson (Chorus Librarian) and Adam Murgatroyd (Band Rep) loyally wearing the sandwich-board.

Well done to all of them, staunchly manning (and woman-ing!) the society stand throughout the day; thanks also to those who also helped but didn’t make it into the photograph!

See you all at the Music Social in Eliot Hall on Monday evening for some refreshments, the chance to network like-minded musicians and some live musical entertainment.

Society Ladies: (l-r)Kathryn Redgers, Aisha Bove, Rachel Richardson and Hannah Lilley

What’s on: new autumn brochure published

If last year’s brochure was mouth-watering, then the new one is even more so.

Bones Apart
Bones Apart: October 10

Celebrating ten years of sponsorship with Furley Page Solicitors, the new Lunchtime Concert series includes a trombone quartet, a return visit from Benjamin Frith to perform the solo piano version of Mussorgsky’s epic ‘Pictures at an Exhibition,’ and the University Camerata in some seasonal shivering in December.

The University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra bring Finzi, Parry, and Ravel’s orchestration of the Mussorgsky to Eliot Hall in December, whilst the Chamber Choir will welcome the Advent season in a sequence of music and readings at the Church of St. Cosmus and Damian in Blean.

Some of the Music Scholars will be giving a lunchtime concert as part of the Canterbury Festival, and the annual Children in Need ‘Sing for Pudsey’ this year takes place in the Gulbenkian Theatre. The term finishes in December seasonal style with ‘Carols around the Tree’ – weather-permitting! There’s also a look ahead to some of the events in the spring term.

Full details on the on-line diary here, or download the PDF here.

Furley Page logo
Sponsors of the Lunchtime Concert series

Handel opera hero provides tough choices on Prom date

Be My Guest: an occasional series featuring guest posts and contributions. This week, for one former musical alumnus, going to a performance of Handel’s Rinaldo at this year’s Proms raises some serious questions about which man she wants in her life…

BBC Proms 2011Remember how I went out with N.? How it was all lovely and picture-perfect, but neither of us really felt a spark? Well, seeing as we’re nearing our one-year anniversary of that date (and haven’t really been in touch since) we decided to repeat last year’s performance and go to the same outdoor festival. Now, I’m still not really in the market for dates, but this seemed to be more a reminiscent outing than anything else- we had a fun time watching a movie last year, so why not do it again.

The organisation was very simple- after all, we’d done this date before. The only apparent problem was that on the day of the festival, it was raining like mad (what with it being August in London and all), and I couldn’t really see us sitting outside on the ground, huddling in the downpour, trying to keep the mud from seeping into our mats and blankets, all while balancing umbrellas,  trying to see the screen and eating sushi. I guess you can see my priorities here.

Either way, I proposed what I thought of as an excellent alternative to outdoor cinema: Prom 55. It has the same picnic + culture spirit as the original plan, but instead of in the rain, we’d sit in the Royal Albert Hall. I love opera, I love Handel, I love Handel operas- I was already completely sold on the idea. In a quick text, my date agreed and we settled where and when we’d meet.

I spent half the afternoon researching Rinaldo, reading synopsis and interpretations and pre-listening to important arias online. I was positively giddy when I arrived at our meeting point. Also because I was curious to meet N. again. But yeah, mostly for meeting R.

Our pre-Prom queue banter quickly showed that N. hadn’t even realised he was going to a partially-staged opera performance instead of an orchestral concert. His face twitched slightly when he asked “Oh, with singing and everything?”- which should have warned me. However, I was in my own little bubble of enthusiasm and just replied “Yes, it’s going to be amazing!” instead of picking up on his scepticism.

We got gallery tickets, and found space to sit near the bannisters about in the middle of the gallery. Excellent promming! We could see the entire stage, albeit through “prison bars” as my date charmingly put it, and I got even more excited.

I was enthralled from the first notes of the ouverture (go listen to it here). Prom 55 was the Glyndebourne 2011 production of R. by Georg Friedrich Handel, where the Crusade Age plot is re-imagined as a revenge-fuelled school boy’s dream after he’s been bullied one time too many. Seeing as the original baroque opera’s plot is confusing at best, and racially, sexistically and religiously insensitive and bigotted at worst, I thought this was a clever choice(although on a whole the “transported in modern time through one thing or other” strategy isn’t my favourite staging tool) and overall, the transformation into a teenage fantasy worked for me.

Sadistic teachers, wise teachers, mean girls, luring synchronised swimmers, armies of bicycle riders and football playing boys- R. filled his dream with some too-well-loved stereotypes and cliches along with some very bright ideas. While the latex-clad Armida as teacher with cane and posse of St Trinian lookalikes felt a bit heavy-handed for me, I found the reimagining of the final battle scene of christians and muslims as a slow-motion football game that ended with R. scoring into the orchestra simply ingenious.

The Orchestra of Enlightenment was fantastic, and although I wasn’t entirely convinced by his harpsichord solos, I really liked Ottavio Dantone’s musical direction. The singers were spirited and lively, with Sonia Prina’s title role a special treat.

You can tell, I adored it from the first minute. Poor N. really didn’t. He hadn’t read the plot beforehand, and my hastily whispered 45 second introduction to a story along the lines of  “…and then A dresses up as B and her lover C falls in love with her in costume, so she plots revenge together with B’s lover D, who she has imprisoned earlier. Oh, and she’s a witch!” didn’t really enlighten him either.

The Prom performance was not surtitled like most other foreign language opera performances (a decision I don’t understand), N. thus had hardly any chance to understand what was going on for the next two-and-a-half hours.We discussed our experiences in the first interval, and it became clear he had resigned to just listening and ignoring the plot completely. And although he was too polite to explicitly state it, it was quite obvious that baroque opera was not the music he would usually choose to listen to for an evening while sitting on the linoleum covered floor amidst a bunch of opera-fanatic strangers.

This essentially gave me a choice to either a) be a very nice person, suggest to leave during the interval and get some drinks instead and spend some more quality time with X. or b) resist the social clues, stay for the rest of the opera and spend some more quality time with R.

I went with b). Because I truly fell in love with R. I’ve been obsessively listening to the recording over and over again in the past days. I’ve imagined our future, how I’ll buy the DVD when it comes out and how I’m going to go to all future Glyndebourne proms. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends, and just writing it down now makes me smile.

N. took it very gracefully, and I promised him non-operatic drinks next week.

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(Read more from about our guest’s grappling with life on their own blog here).

A year in the life: music at Kent 2010-11 newsletter

Simply writing a review of last year’s musical activities here at the University has made me realise what a terrifically versatile, extra-curricular department we have: everything from formal classical Cathedral concerts (too much alliteration ?!) to informal jazz gigs, music theatre productions, Scholars’ recitals, and far too many other activities to mention here. Students, staff, alumni, members of the local community, visiting professional players – all contributing to a rich and varied aspect of the University’s cultural life, and creating a vibrant social side to everything that goes on here.

Including some fine photographs courtesy of Mick Norman, here’s the review of last year; and if you think that’s good, wait until you see what’s lined up for this year when the Autumn brochure is published shortly…

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Or click here to download the PDF.

 

University Music Prize Winners announced

One of the highlights of each year is being able to recognise the contribution that some of the students have made to the year’s music-making at the University. At a ceremony last week, seven outstanding students were awarded prizes, in recognition of their significant contributions to the year’s musical calendar.

l-r: Andrew Kitchin, Kate Lumley, Alice Godwin, Alanya Holder, Anna Shinkfield, Kathryn Redgers; front, Chris Gray

This year’s Canterbury Festival Music Prize, awarded by Director of the Canterbury Festival, Rosie Turner, to a final-year student who has made an outstanding contribution to music at the University, was given jointly to Alice Godwin (Politics and International Relations) and Kate Lumley (English and Comparative Literature). Both Alice and Kate have shone in the woodwind section of the Symphony Orchestra in their time at Kent, as well as in Concert Band; they have both also performed in the Scholars’ Festival Concert as part of the Canterbury Festival.

The Colyer-Fergusson Music Prize, presented by chairman of the Colyer-Fergusson Charitable Trust,  Jonathan Monckton, which is awarded to a student who has made a major contribution to organising music at the University, was awarded jointly to Alanya Holder (Law) and Anna Shinkfield (English and American Literature). Alanya was President of the Music Society this year, as well as participating in choirs and singing jazz; Anna was Acting Secretary of the Music Society, and has performed on the recorder as well as singing with the Chorus and playing sax with the Concert and Big Bands – though not all at the same time…

Chris Gray (Architecture) was awarded the University Music Prize, having made a major contribution to music at the University this year, including (as well as his instrumental playing), the shifting of timpani and other assorted heavy orchestral gear!

The Awards Committee made a final two awards; Andrew Kitchin (Mathematics), who has been a stalwart of the ‘Jazz @ 5 ‘series and has performed at every one since its inception in 2008, and Kathryn Redgers (History), who has made a tremendous impact on music in her first year as a flautist at Kent.

Of course, there are a thronging mass of students who play a part in all the concerts and musical events in the University’s calendar, and the Music Awards Committee has a difficult role to play in singling out particular individuals; the decision-making process is long and arduous, but an important one to allow the University to thank an especial few for their major role in everything musical over the year.

Congratulations to all of them!

Happening around the grounds: ArtsFest next week!

Keep an eye out for a wealth of events between Wednesday 8 to Friday 10 June, as ArtsFest comes to the Canterbury campus next week.

Starting at 5pm each day, the Jarman Piazza and Registry Stage will each host a variety of entertainment, including improvised comedy from the ever-popular ‘Play It By Ear,’ live jazz, capoeira, belly-dancing, a mini ‘Two Choirs Festival,’ folk music, barbershop, poetry, live theatre performance and more.

All these informal events are free and open to everyone: just turn up!

And don’t forget the Big Band Gala concert on Wednesday evening, as the University Big Band and guests storm back to the Gulbenkian: tickets and details here.

Keep an eye out for details on-line from next week on the ArtsFest homepage here.