![\"Eliot](\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/files\/2010\/03\/soiree_blog.jpg\" "\\"Eliot")
<\/a>From the sweeping grandeur of Canterbury Cathedral to the intimacy of Eliot College in just five days: music at the University gets everywhere.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The soir\u00e9e musicale<\/em> last Thursday in Eliot Senior Common Room saw a packed audience of staff, students and\u00a0guests entertained by Scholars and musical staff and students\u00a0in an evening of French music. Repertoire ranged from the high-art chansons <\/em>of Faur\u00e9 and Saint-Sa\u00ebns via the tenderness of Poulenc\u2019s Sonata for Oboe,\u00a0<\/em> an Italian evening on the Grand Canal in Belle Nuit (Barcarolle)<\/em> from Offenbach, to the contemporary, gutsy blues of Regarde les Riches.<\/em> The University Clarinet Quartet tripped deftly through Chaminade\u2019s Danse Cr<\/em>\u00e9ole<\/em>, whilst other woodwind duets featured players, who had the week before filled the Cathedral, in works by Faur\u00e9, Poulenc and Bizet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n An eight-part vocal consort drew the performance to a close with a traditional French folk-song arrangement, and also let in the only imposter of the evening, Morten Lauridsen, with his setting of En Une Seule Fleur<\/em>. Well, fair enough: Lauridsen is a rising star of the American choral scene, but it was<\/em> a setting of a poem by Rilke, and it is something of a showpiece for singers as well, so it was allowed.\u00a0(So there.)\u00a0<\/p>\n The enthusiastic audience included many donors and benefactors who support the University\u2019s Music Scholarships as well as all its music-making, and this was a great opportunity to thank them for their continuing support.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Thank you to Michael Hughes, Master of Eliot College, for the invitation to perform, and to Meredith Johnson, the Master\u2019s Assistant, for co-ordinating the lavish buffet which followed to the delight of all, especially these three ladies…\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>