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Wednesday 17th October Hodson Hall ~ 7.15pm

PROGRAMME

Big Band Conductor ~ Chris Groom

Vehicle - James M Peterik arr. Ralph Ford

Birdland - Josef Zawinal arr. Larry Kerchner

Soul Man - Isaac Hayes and David Porter arr. Paul Murtha

Chamber Choir

Conductor ~ Alex Osiatynski

From The Sprig of Thyme - John Rutter

The Bold Grenadier - The Willow Tree - The Sprig of Thyme Down by the Sally Gardens - The Keel Row

Symphonic Wind Band

Conductor ~ Aidan Geary

Symphonic Marches - John Williams arr. Maurice Hamers

The Lost Chord - Arthur Sullivan arr. Geoff Kingston featuring Edward Liu (Trumpet)

Far From Home - Kit Turnbull

INTERVAL

Senior Choir Conductor ~ Alex Osiatynski

Jesus Christ Superstar Medley- Andrew Lloyd Webber arr. Neil Slater

Senior Girls Choir Conductor ~ Nicola Bouckley

The Seal Lullaby - Eric Whitacre

Give Us Hope - Jim Papoulis arr. Nez

Symphony Orchestra Conductor ~ Alex Osiatynski

From The Planets - Gustav Holst

Mars - Venus - Jupiter

Big Band

Vehicle - James M Peterik arr. Ralph Ford

Birdland - Josef Zawinal arr. Larry Kerchner

Soul Man - Isaac Hayes and David Porter arr. Paul Murtha

Vehicle is always a very popular piece for the Big Band members and appears to have been adopted as their signature tune over the past few years. Originally performed by the band The Ides of March, with Peterik on guitar and vocals, this has been arranged t become a favourite of Big Band repertoire.

Birdland was first made famous by the group Weather Report. It has seen many arrangements during the past 25 years and still continues to wow audiences wherever it is performed.

Soul Man was originally penned by Mr Soul himself, Isaac Hayes. It is written in true Motown style with the saxes taking the lead and the trumpets interjecting throughout. Anyone who has watched the Blues Brothers movie will recognize this classic.

Chamber Choir

from The Sprig of Thyme - John Rutter

The Bold Grenadier - The Willow Tree - The Sprig of Thyme Down by the Sally Gardens - The Keel Row

The beginning of the twentieth century saw a spate of folk-song collecting, both using notation and early (and primitive) recording devices, by composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, who rightly feared that without intervention a whole repertoire of folksong would disappear forever. Whilst the need for preservation has diminished, the desire of composers to keep reworking these folksongs has not and we are all the better for it. This part of our cultural heritage stays in the wider consciousness rather than become a niche pastime (like Morris dancing). These songs tell wonderful tales of love, betrayal, disappointment and death - typical every day stuff! There is, for the adults, a touch of the metaphor and euphemism the first line of the first song being a very good example.

John Rutter is of course one of our most well-loved living composers who knows how to turn a good tune into a great piece of music, and the accompaniments to these songs, which largely hail from around England (the penultimate song being Irish) are wonderful in their lyrical simplicity.

Symphonic Wind Band

Symphonic Marches - John Williams arr. Maurice Hamers

The Lost Chord - Arthur Sullivan arr. Geoff Kingston

Far From Home - Kit Turnbull

John Williams has been at the forefront of film composition for the last 6 decades. From Towering Inferno to Schindlers List, his use of the orchestra, often with striking brass themes and luscious string passages, have enhanced the screenplays immeasurably.

Todays piece, Symphonic Marches, puts three of Williams most popular works into

a suite: Raiders March (Raiders of the Lost Ark), The Imperial March (The Empire

Strikes Back) and Olympic Fanfare and Theme (appropriately for the 1984 Olympic

games in Los Angeles). Maurice Hamers has skilfully set the three works for Wind

Band.

Arthur Sullivan is generally recognised as one half of the very successful Gilbert and Sullivan partnership. Their comic operas written in the late nineteenth century continue to fill theatres around the world today. Sullivan is often neglected as a composer in his own right but with thirteen major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, he has left a considerable legacy.

The Lost Chord is a song based on a lyric, written as a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter written in1858. The final verse of the poem reads:

It may be that death's bright angel Will speak in that chord again, It may be that only in Heav'n I shall hear that grand Amen

Sullivans setting of the poem was composed at the bedside of his brother Fred during the final days of his life in 1877. The final line of the text can be heard in full climax at the end of Geoff Kingstons beautiful arrangement, featuring our trumpet soloist Edward Liu.

Commissioned last year for the Shrewsbury Music Festival, Kit Turnbulls Far From

Home is an original composition for Symphonic Wind Band, and is based on a

number of sea shanties from different parts of the world. Far From Home is the title

of a traditional English country dance, and neatly sums up the lives of many sailors,

seamen and fishermen in years gone by, who were often away from home for years

at a time. Some of the other songs used in the piece today include: The Cobblers

Hornpipe, Henry Martin, Dance to Your Daddy and Farewell Nancy. From 1997 Kit

Turnbull studied composition with Martin Ellerby at the London College of Music

where he subsequently became a course leader and composition tutor. He is

currently Composition and Arranging tutor to the Royal Air Force Music Services.

Senior Choir

Jesus Christ Superstar - Andrew Lloyd Webber

If John Rutter is one of our most-loved composers then Andrew Lloyd Webber must surely be one of our most successful whether you love him or hate him; the succession of hit musicals is quite breathtaking in styles that span all conceivable genres and to think that his first show, Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat, was written when he was 21 and for a prep school play. What is much more amazing however is that Jesus Christ Superstar was his second show and on something of a larger scale than Joseph. Like Joseph and many shows after, JCS benefitted from the outstanding lyric-creating brain of Tim Rice and that their working partnership fell by the wayside in later years is one of the tragedies in the history of musical theatre.

JCS is incredible in combining rock music together with elements of avant-garde composition that were in the foreground of the early 1970s; its not often that you found rock in 7/8 or 5/4 time, but it works with a sense of impulsive drive and excitement that carries an audience along. That it has taken forty years to create the originally intended production an arena tour, which finishes this weekend and plays at Wembley arena tonight seems incredible, but we hope that tonight you get a flavour of the great music from this show in a choral medley of some of the best-loved hits including those sung by Judas (Listen Jesus I Dont Like What I See),

Mary Magdalene (I Dont Know How to Love Him), King Herod and Jesus himself.

Senior Girls Choir

The Seal Lullaby - Eric Whitacre

Give Us Hope - Jim Papoulis arr. Nez

The Seal Lullaby by the renowned vocal composer Eric Whitacre is based on the Rudyard Kipling story of the same title. This setting of the words is simple and sweet, with beautiful melodies and occasionally startling harmonies, whilst always maintaining the tender feel of a lullaby.

Jim Papoulis music combines the music of his roots classical and jazz with the rhythms and influence of world music. His compositions are performed worldwide, from the Royal Albert Hall in London to the Great Wall of China! Give Us Hope is taken from the project Sounds of a better world, a series of songs which examine how small steps can be made to improve the world in which we live.

Symphony Orchestra

from The Planets - Gustav Holst

Mars - Venus - Jupiter

Tonight the Symphony Orchestra performs three of the seven movements which together make up Holsts most famous work. Indeed he was not totally happy with the critical (or perhaps uncritical) acclaim which the piece received in the 1920s and he once wrote every artist ought to pray that he may not be a success perhaps ahead of his time in believing that celebrity, even cult status, could be detrimental to a composers art. He was clearly a very unpretentious man but an incredibly hard worker; simultaneous with many of his finest compositions he was working at both Morley College in London and as Director of Music at St Pauls Girls School.

The Planets refers less to star-gazing than to horoscopes and that branch of astrology, and thus human character, and in this way there are some similarities with Elgars Nimrod Variations. The three movements selected for performance tonight work very well as a group in their own right, with the calm, lullaby-esque melodies of Venus, portraying the mysticism and wonder of space, providing a respite from the outer movements which are as energetic as they are popular and well-known. The driving 5-in-a-bar rhythms of Mars proved to be a profound influence on