Elgar

NOW BOOKING – Blow the Dust off Your Instrument, and Nottingham Festival Chorus course and concert

Helena Durham

Feeling the chill of winter coming on? Warm it up by booking for one or both of our opportunities for adults, or tickets for the Festival Chorus Concert.

DSC01424Blow the Dust is for instrumentalists, including recorder players, on Saturday 7 January 2017 at Nottingham’s Albert Hall. We suggest Associated Board Grade 2 and above (or equivalent). You will play in different groupings of instruments to give you a wide and enjoyable experience during this orchestral playing day. If you play the recorder, any size of recorder, the ensemble meets in the afternoon only. For more details, click here.

What will we be playing?

The music has been chosen to give scope to players of all abilities and will include Berlioz’s rousing Hungarian March, Tchaikovsky’s lyrical Waltz from his Serenade for Strings especially arranged for full orchestra, the well known Trumpet Tune by Purcell and Elgar’s stirring Pomp and Circumstance March No 4.

There will also be items for windband (conductor Gill Henshaw) and string orchestra (conductor Ann-Marie Shaw). The recorder ensemble will have a varied diet of music carefully chosen by their conductor, Chris McDouall.

MfE-9839The Nottingham Festival Chorus event is spread over two weekends. The rehearsal course, always fun and a challenge to polish up those notes and your singing ability, will be led by Angela Kay, and takes place on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 January at the Bluecoat Academy, Aspley. The final rehearsal and concert are the following Saturday 4 February in the Albert Hall. For more details, click here.

What will we be singing?

This year, there are two works. One of the favourites of the choral music repertoire, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, which is packed full of memorable themes and classic choruses. And then, from the declamatory opening to the final exultant flourish of chorus and orchestra, Dvorak’s Te Deum is a joyous whirlwind of vitality and excitement! We are delighted to welcome Marcus Farnsworth as guest conductor of the concert. What a privilege and treat.

Concert: To book tickets for the Festival Chorus’s concert, click here.

 

Blow the Dust, January 2016

Helena Durham

 

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Two hundred instrumentalists from Nottinghamshire and beyond gathered in the Albert Hall for a day of blowing the dust off their musical instruments. Participants of wide ranging experience played music selected and arranged for differing tastes and abilities.

There were more flautists than seats on a double decker bus, tootling beautifully, fine woodwind and brass sections, strings playing sensitively or with gusto (all those notes, and so fast!), and a trio of percussionists with sticks in mouths and/or on drums, triangles, cymbals and all sort. In another room the recorder group practised away on all five sizes of recorder, from sopranino to bass.

DSC01451Angela Kay, Gill Henshaw and Chris McDouall conducted different groupings of instruments. An informal concert, performed to an appreciative audience, concluded the day.

Repertoire included music for strings alone, for concert band, full orchestra, and for recorder group. The varied programme took us from Dowland to Bernstein, Elgar to Pirates of the Caribbean and, of course, Hucknall’s very own Eric Coates.

Blow the Dust will be back later in the year, so polish your trumpet, rosin your bow, search out your recorder etc. Whatever you play, there’ll be a part waiting for you.

For more photos, see Music for Everyone’s Facebook page.

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