Not one: not two: but three bands come together next week on Wednesday 28 March, as Big Bands 3 returns.
Kent's First Lady of Jazz: Ruby Mutlow
Following on from last year’s highly successful charity concert, the bands of St Edmund’s School and the University of Kent will be joining forces in support of the Jacob Barnes Scholarship Trust.
Jacob ‘Jake’ Barnes, who died aged 21 after a two-year fight against a virulent form of leukemia, was an exceptional talent. He was a scholar at St Edmund’s School, and pianist with the University of Kent Chamber Choir in 2007-08. Following A-Levels, Jake won a place at the Royal Academy of Music. His name will be remembered by the Jacob Barnes Scholarship, which will be presented annually at the Royal Academy of Music to a young chamber ensemble.
Ian Swatman, conductor of the University Concert and Big Bands and also Head of Instrumental Studies at St Edmund’s School, will be at the helm, which will feature popular repertoire for Concert and Big Bands with guest soloists.
Tickets are priced at £5 and are available from the School box office on 01227 475600.
After the Concert and Big Band’s action-packed concert at the Gulbenkian Theatre last month, this promises to be an exciting event, in aid of a very worthy cause. Support it if you can.
There’ll be a sense of the exotic at the Gulbenkian Theatre next Monday lunchtime, as the Silk and Bamboo Ensemble bring music of China to the Lunchtime Concert series.
This ensemble of virtuoso musicians has performed at the Purcell Room and Queen Elizabeth Hall, and has appeared in many festivals, including Cambridge Folk Music, the Edinburgh Festival and in Europe’s WOMEX and WOMAD festivals.
For this special concert the group will present a selection of ensemble and solo pieces of traditional, folk and modern Chinese music.
The concert starts at 1.10pm, and will finish at 1.50pm. Admission as usual is free with a suggested donation £3. Don’t miss it…
Second-year student and conductor of Sing!, Matt Bamford, previews Sing!’s next gig and a new community venture…
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Matt Banford (left) with Music Society President, Chris Gray, at Freshers' Fayre earlier this year
Tomorrow, Friday 23rd March, the residents of Connors House in Canterbury City Centre will be treated to a short performance by the student vocal group Sing!
Abbeyfield Connors House specialises in dementia care and provides accommodation for forty-six older people. Tomorrow evening, the members of Sing! will convene in Canterbury City Centre and will head towards Connors House.
We are lucky in that they have a piano (which they ensure me is tuned!) and as a result of that we won’t need to carry a keyboard through the streets of Canterbury. We will then perform five or six songs, including numbers originally performed by Queen, Amy Winehouse and Michael Bublé.
Part of community singing is that we will then spend time, hopefully over a nice cup of tea, chatting to the residents.
As the Sing! conductor, I think it is really important to allow everybody to enjoy the music-making that goes on at the University, including those who are less able to attend our concerts. So, on this occasion, we decided to take the music to the residents of Connors House and hopefully this will be the first of a series of community concerts.
Watch this space for more information about how the evening went!
Yesterday was apparently the first day of spring, and what better way to herald the change into the new season with the first Jazz @ 5 on the Gulbenkian Theatre’s foyer stage.
Andrew Kitchin
Featuring the robust pianistic skills of second-year Economic student, Niji Adeleye, and saxophonist with the Concert and Big Bands, Tim Pickering, both of whom were making their debut, and Jazz @ 5 stalwart Andrew Kitchin on guitar, the programme kicked off with a lively blues.
Steph Richardson, Niji Adeleye
Over the course of set the stage was graced with songstresses Steph Richardson (who, when not singing jazz or studying Drama, can also be found performing and conducting with the Chamber Choir), Ruby Mutlow (familiar as singer with the Big Band), and Jo Gray. A deft rendition of Too Darn Hot from Steph, a French version of I Go Sailing from Jo and a vibrant I Wish I Knew (How It Feels To Be Free) were just some of the standards in the programme, alongside some instrumental pieces showing Niji’s immense creativity, Andrew’s skilful solo-ing and some robust melodic improvisation from Tim.
Well received by an enthusiastic (and numerous) crowd, the event was a great success: well done to all the performers.
Masters student and violinist Jon-Mark Grussenmeyer reviews the recent Cathedral concert.
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On the fiddle: Jon-Mark Grussenmeyer
After rehearsing with Sue into the late hours of countless Thursdays, performance day was finally upon us. It promised to be a busy day, not least because my family had flown in from New Jersey to watch the concert.
My father kindly offered to drive me from my flat to the pre-concert rehearsal, at which we were supposed to arrive by 10:45. He promptly made a wrong turn at one of the roundabouts, though thankfully he was, at least, still driving on the wrong—I mean left—side of the road. By the time we pulled into town, I was nearly late. Knowing the English fondness for punctuality, and fearing being skewed by Sue’s angry baton, I sprinted into the Cathedral only to find that half of the orchestra had yet to arrive!
As a postgraduate student of Mediaeval Studies, I am often in the Cathedral, usually examining tombs and other objects related to long-dead people, but filling such a building with beautiful music was completely new to me. To sit and play in the vast nave, the gothic vaulting soaring far above our heads, sunlight piercing the leaded windows in dusty golden shafts, was, for me, an unforgettable experience.
After practicing for a while, we were allowed a brief respite, during which my stand partner and I rushed to purchase the coffee and muffins that would keep us alive for the rest of the afternoon. Of course, as we ate, poor Miriam was then subjected to a mini-lecture on the finer points of the Great Cloister’s architecture, which was only halted when we heard the rest of the orchestra tuning inside.
The second half of the rehearsal went quite well for the orchestra. Several times, the combination of such beautiful harmonies and stunning setting was so powerful that it brought tears to my eyes. Then, the beautiful shafts of sunlight began to shift until they shone directly in my face whenever I attempted to look up at Sue, so teary eyes necessarily remained an integral part of the rehearsal.
Rehearsal at an end, I ate a late lunch and wandered around town with my family. As evening wore on, we repaired back to my parents’ room in the Falstaff Hotel, where I changed into my dinner jacket and then walked back to the Cathedral, violin in hand. The only mishap en route was a ‘gentleman’ who attempted to lay hands on my dinner jacket whilst babbling something unintelligible, though I rid myself of him with a fierce look and a few well-chosen words.
We set up our instruments in the shadowy Cathedral Crypt, one of my favourite places in all of Canterbury, and waited for the concert to begin. As 7:30 rolled around, the chorus marched out to take their places on the enormous risers that seemed to reach as high as the quire’s rood screen, and we took our seats and tuned our instruments. I was stunned by the number of people filling the Nave, including the Lord Mayor, who was sitting across from me in the front row with his impressive chain of office. We certainly ought to have chains of office in the States. Finally, Sue, Jeremy, and the soloists emerged to thunderous applause, and the concert took off in the whirlwind of Haydn’s interpretation of Chaos. I am glad that I had time to appreciate my surroundings whilst playing during the rehearsal, for I had little time to notice anything but the notes, the baton, and Jeremy’s bow as I shifted into my intense concert mode. As I am on the front edge of the orchestra, I found it amply necessary to concentrate; in the complete view of the audience, I have to at least appear to know what I’m doing.
As with any performance I have ever completed, orchestral or theatrical, the concert seemed to fly by at breakneck speed, and suddenly, after weeks and weeks of tiring rehearsals, the orchestra and chorus were belting out the last magnificent strains of the Creation. As the echoes of our final chord lingered among the high-flung columns and the audience filled the nave with applause, I gazed up at that splendid Cathedral and at my fellow musicians, trying to etch the moment into my memory. Though I shall take many amazing memories back with me to New Jersey when my time here is over, the memory of this concert numbers among the very best.
The ever-popular Jazz @ 5 series returns for a one-off special this Wednesday, on the Gulbenkian Theatre’s foyer stage.
Lickety-spit: Andrew Kitchin
University musicians will gather at 5pm to provide an informal gig, including jazz standards, showtunes and songs. Appearing at the gig will be Jazz @ 5 regulars Andrew Kitchin (guitar), Steph Richardson and Jo Gray (voice), along with this year’s Big Band singer, Ruby Mutlow.
Making their Jazz @ 5 debut will be saxophonist with the Concert and Big Bands, Tim Pickering, and pianist with the London Community Gospel Choir and second-year Economics student, Niji Adeleye.
The gig starts at 5pm, and admission is free: come and enjoy some laid-back mid-week jazz at the end of the day.
The curtain has sadly fallen for the last time on this year’s production by the Music Theatre Society, and their assured performance of Sondheim’s Into the Woods that never puts a foot wrong. A strong cast and crew combined to give a professional production that at times transcended the auditorium and swept the audience beyond the theatre into the dark moral territory of Sondheim’s show in overwhelming fashion.
As Cinderella, Cheryl Ahmet demonstrated a refined, clear tone, and sang ‘No-one Is Alone’ in particular with a touching simplicity that was deeply moving.
Tenor Richard Simpson as the Baker projected great stage presence, and showed he had a clear insight into the musicality of his arias; he sang with considerable nuance to phrasing, and there’s a fine voice there as well. His delivery of ‘No More’ was full of subtlety and emotion, and held the attention of a rapt audience. Jenni Stewart played Little Red Riding Hood’s impudent childishness to perfection, and her face-muscles must have been working overtime as she portrayed the full range of impish expressions of the ever-snacking child.
The two princes were in very jolly form – the line ‘I was raised to be charming, not sincere’ was greeted with an appreciative and spontaneous round of applause.
Star of the show, however, has to have been scene-stealing Lucie Nash who, as the Baker’s Wife, was in inspired form as she painted the full spectrum of her character’s emotional range; moving from heart-rending desire for a child to puckish swagger and sultry seductress with the Prince, her comic timing in particular was immaculate, and the on-stage rapport with Richard Simpson as the Baker had a genuine warmth. Moving around the stage with an ease that radiated confidence, her ‘Moments in the Woods’ aria was especially beautifully crafted, and sensitive to the nuances in the score.
The orchestra and singers were held together well by the efficient direction of conductor Adam Abo Henriksen.
All in all, this is a triumphant achievement for director and this year’s society President, Lisa Crowhurst. The overall integrity of her sure-footed directorial vision was alive to the sophistication of both Sondheim’s music and text, and its clarity allowed a natural ebb and flow to the narrative drama in a manner which allowed the nuances of the players and the changing emotional and moral relationships between the characters to stand clear.
By the time you read this, the run will have come to its end and the woods will have been cleared; but the entire company can look back on three days of terrific accomplishment in the seaside playhouse. A triumphant achivement for the cast, crew and Society: bravo.
It’s over fifty years since the death of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, presciently given his middle name by parents who must have been sure their child would, like the other great Wolfgang, be something of a child prodigy. Fifty years later, opinion is divided over whether Korngold was a musical genius or a reactionary who preferred to ignore musical modernism in favour of self-indulgent music, pining for a lost age.
Wunderkind: the young composer
The talented Viennese wunderkind was hailed by Mahler and Puccini as a child, and by the tender age of nineteen Korngold had already written a clutch of chamber works and had two one-act operas staged to great acclaim.
Korngold moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to write film scores for Warner Bros, a move which has perhaps contributed to his lack of esteem in critical circles: sadly, there’s still a sense that ‘great composers don’t write film music,’ an idea with which John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith might take issue… And anyone who has heard the sweeping lyricism of the Violin Concerto or the effortless handling of musical ideas in the second and third string quartets might also have something to say about Korngold’s facility for melodic invention and expressive writing.
You can make up your own minds as the Brodsky Quartet brings Korngold’s lyrical Second String Quartet to the Gulbenkian Theatre in their concert this month, along with Gershwin’s evocative Lullaby, Wolf’s sunny Italian Serenade, and Beethoven’s mighty op.132; details and tickets online here.
Here’s a foretaste of the Korngold with the lyrically dancing ‘Waltz’ of the final movement.
Because it does. Doesn't it ? Blogging about extra-curricular musical life at the University of Kent.
This ensemble of virtuoso musicians has performed at the Purcell Room and Queen Elizabeth Hall, and has appeared in many festivals, including Cambridge Folk Music, the Edinburgh Festival and in Europe’s WOMEX and WOMAD festivals.
As Cinderella, Cheryl Ahmet demonstrated a refined, clear tone, and sang ‘No-one Is Alone’ in particular with a touching simplicity that was deeply moving.
By the time you read this, the run will have come to its end and the woods will have been cleared; but the entire company can look back on three days of terrific accomplishment in the seaside playhouse. A triumphant achivement for the cast, crew and Society: bravo.