Huntingdonshire Music School Association - Orchestra

The end of term Christmas concert starts at 19:30 on Friday 4th December at the Huntingdonshire Regional College.

The order of playing is as follows. All welcome.

 
Rock Band               Purple Ska                           arr. S Spall
Intermediate           Troika                                     Sergei Prokofief        
Concert Band           Donâ??t stop the cavalry               Jona Lewie

String Ensemble         Eine Kleine Nachtmusik               Mozart
                        (1st movement)
Carol Mills &            Messiah                             Handel
Marie White
           
             
Prep Concert Band     The Little Drummer Boy               Katherine K Davis
                        Fum Fum Fum                       Catalan Carol
                        We Wish You a Merry Christmas             Traditional  
Senior Orchestra         The Pastoral Symphony               Beethoven
                        (1st movement)               


Interval                       Interval
(sax ensemble playing)

Rock Band               Change in my pocket                 Georgia Satelitel
Brass Ensemble         Christmas Joy                       Erik Leidzén
                        Snow Waltz                         arr. D Jacobson
                        Rock around the Christmas Tree           Johnny Marks

Guitar Ensemble         Grandfathers Clock                         arr. Power
                        Bouree                             Mozart
                        Sans Day Carol                       arr. Hasted
Senior Concert Band     Christmas Calypso                   Peter Graham
                        The Symphonic Beatles              
                        Sleigh Ride                         Leroy Anderson
Big Band                 Hayburner                           Sami Nestico
                        The Christmas Song                 Torme and Wells

During 2007 the BBC ran a series (Play It Again) following the fortunes of 6 adult celebrities as they took on the challenge of learning a new instrument and then performing in public. The BBC also laid on events all over the country giving the public the opportunity to play with a BBC orchestra no matter what level of musical ability or, as we found out, the instrument!

Some of the adults and teenagers from the Huntingdonshire Music School took part in the event at Comberton (see photo) and had a brilliant time. Some of us missed this opportunity because we were busy promoting the school at the accompanying exhibition and instead took part at the event at the Watford Colosseum. The recordings taken formed the basis of a couple of episodes of the HUMS Aloud podcast.

All in all a brilliant opportunity and very inspirational.

The BBC have been very good at keeping in contact with attendees and we’ve received an email stating that another Play It Again style event, their Fabulous Family Music Day, will be held at Watford on Saturday 20th June 2009. It also features the very same Tim Steiner who did such a good job encouraging a motley collection of musicians and all abilities to play alongside their professional counterparts in the BBC Concert Orchestra.

As the BBC say:

Come & Play 10am - 1pm

Members of the BBC Singers

BBC Concert Orchestra

Tim Steiner animateur

Christopher Warren-Green conductor

This free event is aimed at people who would like to, literally, Come & Play with professional musicians. So whether you’re an absolute beginner, a seasoned performer or just haven’t played in a while, there’s no need to worry because you’ll get lots of help from the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers. Dust down your instruments, loosen up those vocal chords and come and join the BBC Concert Orchestra for a morning of music-making.

Led by composer Tim Steiner and conductor Christopher Warren-Green, we will be creating our very own piece based on Bizet’s much-loved opera Carmen. Open to everyone, no matter what your musical ability or experience.

If you have an instrument, you can bring it along to play, and if you haven’t, then you can play the percussion instruments provided or sing. The sessions will be led by acclaimed musician and composer Tim Steiner.

Further information and ticket applications can be found on the BBC website.

Some of you might have watched the BBC Play It Again TV series on BBC1 on Sunday nights. In this series every week an adult celebrity personality is given the challenge of learning a musical instrument and culminates in a major public performance with professional musicians. The series featured the following:-

• Jo Brand - organ
• Frank Skinner - banjo
• Aled Jones - drums
• Robert Winston - saxophone
• Diane Abbott - piano
• Bill Oddie - electric guitar

As part of the campaign to encourage adult learners the BBC laid on a series of events around the country where anyone could turn up with their instrument of choice and have a go with a professional BBC orchestra at rehearsing and then performing a well known piece.

We were asked to provide a stand at the Cambridge event. We also got a brief listing on the BBC website. Myself and some very good folk spent all day taking to very enthused adults and children during the breaks between rehearsals. Some others from the music school took part in the event itself and learnt ‘Tonight’ from Bernstein’s West Side Story. The final performance involved something like 250 people (see below).

What a day! We had quite a lot of ‘bites’ and a lot of promises to turn up and see things on Saturday mornings. There were something like 600 people there. I think I managed to turn round one lady who wanted someone to coach for singing near her in Newmarket to coming to see us if there’s a possibility to join in with a sing with swing event. I have a definite taker who is coming purely for the theory lesson (but once inside I’m sure she’ll succumb!).

The Oud and Hurdy Gurdy attracted a lot of interest and did their job well - thought we had quite an eye-catching stall (but I would, wouldn’t I!). The soundtracks from the Sing with Swing and Big 4-0 were pretty good (although we did have some stiff competition on the noise front in the afternoon).

There were some strange instruments - concert ukalele, mandela (octave mandolin). Everyone taking part seemed to enjoy themselves and the BBC and the orchestra seemed to do a fantastic job at including and encouraging everyone. It concluded with a performance of ‘Tonight’ from the West Side Story - sounded pretty good from the balcony - see below. It’d be interesting to hear from the performers and also those that took pictures or video or captured sound on their phones.

In fact everyone seemed to be having such a good time that myself and my daughter decided to attend the event at the Watford Colliseum 2 weeks later (and recorded the same for the HUMS Aloud podcast…

External Links

• Play It Again on Wikipedia
• Play It Again with the BBC (Official Website)

Well done to the BBC - well worth the license fee for this one event alone. It was really good to see people so enthusiastic about learning to play an instrument.