16
55th SEASON
55th SEASON
pilotPARTNERSis proud to sponsor this evening's concert -
playing that is imaginative, focused, resourceful and
challenging. Just like us...
Interim management specialists
for challenging situations in the UK and Europe
Contact
James Wheeler or Michael Gebauer
T: 0780 859 0176
W: www.pilotpartners.eu
Pilot_A5Concert:Layout 1 30/01/2009 12:07 Page 1
pilotPARTNERSis proud to sponsor this evening's concert -
playing that is imaginative, focused, resourceful and
challenging. Just like us...
Interim management specialists
for challenging situations in the UK and Europe
Contact
James Wheeler or Michael Gebauer
T: 0780 859 0176
W: www.pilotpartners.eu
Pilot_A5Concert:Layout 1 30/01/2009 12:07 Page 1
In accordance with the requirements of Westminster City Council persons shall not be permitted to sit or stand in any gangway. The taking of photographs and use of recording equipment is strictly forbidden without formal consent from St. John’s. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in St. John’s. Refreshments are permitted only in the Restaurant in the Crypt. During the interval and after the concert the Restaurant in the Crypt is open for licensed refreshments. Please ensure that all digital watch alarms, pagers and mobile phones are switched off.
Box office tel: 020 7222 1061. Website: www.sjss.org.uk. For details of future events at St. John’s please send £8.00 annual subscription to the box office.
St. John’s, Smith Square Charitable Trust, registered charity no: 1045390. Registered in England. Company no: 3028678. General Manager: Paul Davies.
Russell Keable conductorAlan Tuckwood leader
Smetana Overture to The Bartered Bride
Richard Ayres No. 37b for orchestra
Interval – 20 minutes
Dvořák Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’
Monday 27 June 2011, 7.30pm St. John’s, Smith Square
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TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME
BEDŘICH SMETANA 1824–1884
Overture to The Bartered Bride
Until the 1850s Smetana was known mainly as a teacher and composer of salon music. This was frustrating for a man who had counted Liszt among his early supporters. In 1856, hearing that opportunities were easier to come by in Sweden, he left Prague for Gothenburg. There he worked as a teacher and choirmaster, while beginning to write large-scale music that he hoped would improve his reputation.
His incentives for leaving Bohemia were not entirely musical. There was no independent Czech state at this time, Bohemia being a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1848 there had been an uprising in Prague against the conservative and repressive regime, a revolt in which Smetana had briefly participated. After its failure, the political climate became even more poisonous, and so it was wise for someone with nationalist sentiments to seek a life elsewhere.
In 1857 Smetana visited his old mentor, Liszt, in Weimar. While there he met the Austrian conductor Johann von Herbeck. Herbeck commented that in his opinion the Czech people were incapable of producing a distinct national music. This incensed Smetana, and he determined to prove Herbeck wrong: “I swore there and then that no other than I should beget a native Czech music.” This provocation was to prove the making of Smetana.
By the 1860s the political climate was thawing slightly in Prague, and Smetana decided to return. He was encouraged by the news that an opera house was to be built there, and saw this as an opportunity to create an authentic Czech musical style. First he had to overcome a rather unfortunate handicap: he did not actually speak Czech very well. As a subject of Austria he had been educated almost entirely in German, and had to work hard to gain fluency in what was supposed to be his native language. Eventually he improved enough to gain a job as a music critic. Meanwhile he composed his opera The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, on the subject of the invasion of Prague by Otto of Brandenburg in the 13th century.
The Brandenburgers was a hit, and the opera house readily accepted Smetana’s next opera for performance, a light comedy called The Bartered Bride. Its première in 1866 was less successful. This was partly due to the fact that Prague was under threat of invasion by the Prussian army, a tense situation that would shortly explode into war.
However, after revisions The Bartered Bride was restaged in 1870. This time it was a huge success. It quickly established itself as the Czech national opera, and was a great inspiration to the nascent independence movement. The distinct rhythms and inflections of the Czech language and Czech folk dances were an important part of the style of the music, and this is heard to great effect in the bustling overture, which unusually was the first part of the opera to be written.
Bedřich Smetana
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No. 37b for orchestra
I. Alfred Wallis (in Paradise) Observes Saint Joseph (the carpenter) at Work and at LeisureII. Sjonnie Kurzak (a broken soul) AscendsIII. When Gippy Dizon opened his eyes, the heavenly procession was still there…IV. Exit
Of No. 37b Richard Ayres says, “This piece is about death and various forms of afterlife. Many of my pieces are about death (and life)... it is probably a way to dispose of my childhood woes.” Lest this sound too grim, he qualifies: “Although my music is generally tragic, I do try to include humour, and all other emotions, in the same way that I experience them in life. Perhaps the longer films of Charlie Chaplin are the closest to my creative ideal.”
Like Chaplin, Ayres’s music has a rare ability to be simultaneously genuinely funny and poignant. “I often feel that I am making films without pictures,” he says. “Music is rarely thought of as more than pitches and sounds, but the act of playing a note on the horn has a theatrical and a narrative power, and the violin section is fulfilling a narrative function as well as making sounds. I feel this is something to be aware of when writing music—a musical performance is in every way a three-dimensional event.”
All Ayres’s works are given numbers instead of titles. He gives three reasons for this. Two are prosaic: “I don’t have a lot of imagination for titles, and the ones I have made up were pretty awful; I find it easier to remember which piece is which (although this is no longer true. As I get older and the number of pieces increases, I find I can’t remember which is which).” The third suggests a deeper impulse at work: “A title determines, or colours the listener’s perception of a piece of music. I don’t want to pollute a listener’s experience unless it is absolutely necessary.” In his more recent music the utilitarian numbers are increasingly contradicted, however, by extravagant subtitles that “either concur with, or contradict how we experience the music’s emotional world”.
The composer and writer Christopher Fox has described No. 37b as a symphony that cannot quite remember “how a symphony might hold together”. This sense of ad-hoc construction is graphically illustrated in the opening movement, in which the percussion section engages in carpentry—”trying to nail the piece together,” Fox suggests. The carpentry and the divine setting have a personal resonance for Ayres, whose father was a carpenter and is a fundamentalist
RICHARD AYRES b. 1965
Richard Ayres
TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME
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Christian, neither of which traits have been inherited: “I am hopeless at woodwork, and have developed an extreme allergy to religion.” This use of sounds that are associated with life outside a concert hall are a natural development of Ayres’s eclecticism, which embraces Janáček, Richard Strauss and Charles Ives with equal enthusiasm: “I want to use consonance, dissonance, melody, texture, elephants, clouds, snowballs, anything, from any time and whenever it is needed.”
Ayres offers few clues to the lives of Sjonnie Kurzak or Gippy Dixon, the named protagonists of the middle two movements. No amount of Googling will offer any evidence that they even existed. “I actually don’t see any deep difference between the invented and the remembered... I think we are all busy rearranging what exists—playing around with cultural building blocks. It is how we personally rearrange our vision of the world, what choices we make or don’t make, that leads to an interesting and personal musical composition—or a personal contribution to life... In music, something that is somehow structured in time (structured to help us remember?), we are dealing all the time with memory—people choose to do it in different ways.” He does suggest that “Sjonnie Kurzak was a gypsy trumpet player. When he was too old to play he was left homeless, and died neglected, broken, and in great poverty. I imagined his tortured soul, finally at peace, ascending to heaven.”
The finale seems certain that it should be providing a triumphant climax but constantly peters out. At one point the tuba attempts a sermon, assisted by a dustbin lid. Everything grinds to a halt, and then stutters back into life, in a way reminiscent of the magic broom in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, before reaching an abrupt, apparently arbitrary conclusion. Given that the previous two movements have been set in heaven or thereabouts, the natural conclusion to be drawn is that “Exit” is a descent to earth, or possibly further.
These ideas—of remembered and imagined worlds and the ways they connect with and reflect each other—find an echo in the work of Alfred Wallis, whom Ayres evokes in the opening movement “sitting in heaven watching St Joseph (the carpenter and earthly father of Jesus Christ) who is keeping himself occupied, for eternity, with a new (and divine) wood-working project.” Wallis (1855-1942) was, like Ayres, a Cornishman. He was a fisherman by trade, and took up painting in his seventies after his wife died, “for company”. He had no training, and painted mostly on cardboard with the same paints used to paint boats. His subject was the sea, and his memories of fishing. There is a strange power to his paintings, naive in execution and built from whatever materials he had to hand, that finds a resonance in the juxtapositions Ayres creates of familiar ideas in unfamiliar settings, and the combination of fact and fiction that he uses to direct (and sometimes misdirect) our ears. By the time Wallis began to paint, steam ships had all but replaced sailed boats; his art is thus a similar combination of memory and invention. Wallis’s idiosyncratically spelled description of his work in a letter to a friend could also stand for much of Ayres’s world:
“What I do mosley is what used to bee out of my own memory what we may never see again as Thing are altered all to gether Ther is nothin what ever do not look like what it was sence I can Rember”
TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME
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TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME
Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’
I. Adagio—Allegro moltoII. LargoIII. Scherzo: Molto vivaceIV. Allegro con fuoco
AC Grayling’s plans to open a private university may be a current controversy, but the idea is far from new. In 1884 the wealthy American socialite Jeannette Thurber opened her National Conservatory of Music of America in New York. Thurber was the daughter of Henry Meyers, a Danish immigrant violinist. She studied at the Paris Conservatory and later married into money; thereafter she became one of the first important patrons of classical music in the United States. Her ambition that the Conservatory should be the first of a nationwide franchise of educational institutions never came to pass. Its founder’s declining energy meant that its activity declined rapidly after the First World War. The stock market crash of 1929 effectively killed the institution, although it was not declared officially defunct until 1952.
However, for a brief period at the turn of the century the Conservatory was a beacon for music education in the United States. Its aim was to make a musical education available to all, and Thurber made a particular point of encouraging disabled and African-American students; among the latter was the composer Harry T Burleigh, now best remembered for his collections of spirituals. To raise the profile of the institution, Mrs Thurber sought out the services of distinguished musicians. Undoubtedly her biggest coup in this regard was appointing Antonín Dvořák as Director in 1892.
By the early 1890s Dvořák’s international reputation was secure, and his music was attracting increasing attention in the USA. So when the first director of the National Conservatory resigned in 1889, it was natural that Thurber should put a proposal to the famous Czech composer (although she apparently also considered a young Finnish composer called Jean Sibelius for the post). Dvořák was excited by the prospects of taking on the job. “The Americans expect great things of me,” he wrote to a friend, “and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a national music. If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could they not too, when their country and people are so immense?”
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK 1841–1904
Antonín Dvořák
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His ideas about the possibility of a national American music were swayed quickly by one of his new pupils. As well as studying at the Conservatory, Harry Burleigh was supplementing his income by working as a handyman there. Dvořák’s first encounter with him was when he heard Burleigh singing spirituals as he cleaned the halls. Dvořák was fascinated by what he heard, and insisted that Burleigh sing more to him and tell him about this music. For Burleigh, such interest in music that most white society dismissed as barbaric was inspiring. The two men established a close friendship that lasted until Dvořák’s death in 1904.
Such music struck a chord with Dvořák because of his fierce pride in his own Czech folk heritage. “Nothing must be to low or too insignificant for the musician,” he wrote in an article in 1895. “The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds. Thousands pass it, while others trample it under foot, and thus the chances are that it will perish before it is seen by the one discriminating spirit who will prize it above all else.” Soon after his arrival in America and his encounter with Burleigh, he declared, “I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States... They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.” Dvořák’s prediction was in a sense accurate, though in the detail he was wildly wrong. He assumed that African-American music would be absorbed into the old European forms and techniques. In fact what happened was the opposite: African-Americans imported elements of European harmony and form into their own tradition to create the definitive American music, jazz.
Another important influence on Dvořák as he began to write his Ninth Symphony was Jeannette Thurber’s determination that Dvořák should write an opera based on Longfellow’s Hiawatha. She even took him to see “Buffalo” Bill Cody’s Wild West show to stoke his enthusiasm. This may explain why, when the new symphony was performed, Dvořák declared that “the work was written under the direct influence of a serious study of the national music of the North American Indians,” although he qualified this by admitting, “I have not actually used any of the [Native American] melodies.” He also declared in an interview that “I found that the music of the Negroes and of the Indians was practically identical.” This extraordinary statement can only really be explained by the fact that Dvořák had not actually studied Native American music in any great detail (although he had been given access to a limited number of transcriptions of dubious merit).
Whatever the true extent of the local influences on the ‘New World’ Symphony (a title bestowed by Thurber), it is evident that the composer’s own Bohemian roots exert at least as great, if not greater an influence. The critic Henry Krehbiel observed that “Dr Dvořák can no more divest himself of his nationality than the leopard change his spots.” The slow movement may be inspired by Indians on the plains at night, and the Scherzo may be a portrait of Hiawatha’s wedding feast as he claimed, but Dvořák’s view of the New World is that of someone longing to return to the old one. Homesickness eventually led him to resign in 1895 and return to Prague. But regardless of the true extent of the American influence on his symphony, it has a vital legacy: what mattered was that Dvořák stood up and declared the value of these often dismissed traditions.
© 2011 Peter Nagle
TONIGHT’S PROGRAMME
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ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
BIOGRAPHIES
Russell Keable conductor
Russell Keable has established a reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting musicians. As a conductor he has been praised in the national and international press: “Keable and his orchestra did magnificently,” wrote the Guardian; “one of the most memorable evenings at the South Bank for many a month,” said the Musical Times.
He performs with orchestras and choirs throughout the British Isles, has conducted in Prague and Paris (concerts filmed by French and British television) and recently made his debut with the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra in Dubai.
As a champion of the music of Erich Korngold he has received particular praise: the British première of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt was hailed as a triumph, and research in Los Angeles led to a world première of music from Korngold’s film score for The Sea Hawk.
Keable was trained at Nottingham and London Universities; he studied conducting at London’s Royal College of Music with Norman Del Mar, and later with George Hurst. For 27 years he has been associated with Kensington Symphony Orchestra, one of the UK’s finest non-professional orchestras, with whom he has led first performances of works by many British composers (including Peter Maxwell Davies, John Woolrich, Robin Holloway, David Matthews, Joby Talbot and John McCabe). He has also made recordings of two symphonies by Robert Simpson, and a Beethoven CD was released in New York.
Russell Keable is recognized as a dynamic lecturer and workshop leader. He has the rare skill of being able to communicate vividly with audiences of any age (from school children to music students, adult groups and international business conferences). Over five years he developed a special relationship with the Schidlof Quartet, with whom he established an exciting and innovative education programme. He holds the post of Director of Conducting at the University of Surrey.
Keable is also in demand as a composer and arranger. He has written works for many British ensembles, and his opera Burning Waters, commissioned by the Buxton Festival as part of their millennium celebration, was premièred in July 2000. He has recently completed music for the mime artist Didier Danthois to use working in prisons and special needs schools.
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Kensington Symphony Orchestra
In its 55th year Kensington Symphony Orchestra enjoys an enviable reputation as one of the finest amateur orchestras in the UK. Its founding premise—to provide students and amateurs with an opportunity to perform concerts at the highest possible level—continues to be at the heart of its mission. It regularly attracts the best non-professional players from around London.
It seems extraordinary that KSO has had only two principal conductors—the founder, Leslie Head, and the current incumbent, Russell Keable. The dedication, enthusiasm and passion of these two musicians has indelibly shaped KSO’s image, giving it a distinctive repertoire which undoubtedly sets it apart from other groups. Its continued commitment to the performance of the most challenging works in the canon is allied to a hunger for new music, lost masterpieces, overlooked film scores and those quirky corners of the repertoire that few others dare touch.
Revivals and premières, in particular, have peppered the programming from the very beginning. In the early days there were world premières of works by Arnold Bax and Havergal Brian, and British premières of works by Nielsen, Schoenberg, Sibelius and Bruckner (the original version of the Ninth Symphony). When Russell Keable arrived in 1983, he promised to maintain the distinctive flavour of KSO. As well as the major works of Mahler, Strauss, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, Keable has aired a number of unusual works as well as delivering some significant musical landmarks—the London première of Dvořák’s opera Dimitrij and the British première of Korngold’s operatic masterpiece, Die tote Stadt (which the Evening Standard praised as “a feast of brilliant playing”). In January 2004, KSO, along with the London Oriana Choir, performed a revival of Walford Davies’s oratorio Everyman, which is now available on the Dutton label.
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ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
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ARTISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES
New music has continued to be the life-blood of KSO. An impressive roster of contemporary composers has been represented in KSO’s progressive programmes, including Judith Weir, Benedict Mason, John Woolrich, Joby Talbot and Peter Maxwell Davies. Two exciting collaborations with the BBC Concert Orchestra have been highlights of recent seasons: Bob Chilcott’s Tandem and the première of Errollyn Wallen’s lively romp around the subject of speed dating, Spirit Symphony, at the Royal Festival Hall, both of which were broadcast on BBC Radio 3. In December 2005, Spirit Symphony was awarded the Radio 3 Listeners’ Award at the British Composer Awards. Russell Keable has also written music for the orchestra, particularly for its recent education projects, which have seen members of the orchestra working with schools from the inner London area.
In 2006 KSO marked its 50th anniversary. The celebrations started with a ball at the Radisson Hotel, Portman Square in honour of the occasion, attended by many of those involved with the orchestra over the previous 50 years. The public celebration took the form of a concert at London’s Barbican in October. A packed house saw the orchestra perform an extended suite from Korngold’s score The Sea Hawk, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with established KSO collaborator Nikolai Demidenko, and Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky, with the London Oriana Choir.
KSO has an honourable pedigree in raising funds for charitable concerns. Its very first concert was given in aid of the Hungarian Relief Fund, and in recent years the orchestra has supported the Jacqueline du Pré Memorial Fund, the Royal Brompton Hospital Paediatric Unit, Trinity Hospice, Field Lane, Shape London and the IPOP music school.
The reputation of the orchestra is reflected in the quality of international soloists who regularly appear with KSO—these have included Nikolai Demidenko, Nicholas Daniel, Tasmin Little and Steven Isserlis—each enjoying the immediate, enthusiastic but thoroughly professional approach of these amateur musicians.
Without the support of its sponsors, its Friends scheme and especially its audiences, KSO could not continue to go from strength to strength and maintain its traditions of challenging programmes and exceptionally high standards of performance. Thank you for your support.
If you would like to receive news of our forthcoming concerts by email, please join our mailing list. Just send a message to [email protected] and we’ll
do our best to keep you informed.
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To support KSO you might consider joining our very popular Friends Scheme. There are three levels of membership and attendant benefits:
Friend
Unlimited concession rate tickets per concert; priority bookings, free interval drinks and concert programmes.
Premium friend
A free ticket for each concert, unlimited guest tickets at concessionary rates, priority bookings, free interval drinks and concert programmes.
Patron
Two free tickets for each concert, unlimited guest tickets at concessionary rates, priority bookings, free interval drinks and concert programmes.
All Friends and Patrons can be listed in concert programmes under either single or joint names.
We can also offer tailored Corporate Sponsorships for companies and groups. Please ask for details.
Cost of membership for the 56th Season is:
Friend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £50 Premium friend. . . . . . . . . . £110 Patron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £200
To contribute to KSO through joining the Friends please contact David Baxendale on 020 8653 5091 or by email at [email protected].
Honorary Friends
Michael FlemingLeslie Head
Patrons
Gill CameronMalcolm and Christine DunmowGerald HjertDavid and Mary Ellen McEuenLinda and Jack PievskyNeil Ritson and family
Premium friends
David BaxendaleBarbara BedfordFortuné and Nathalie BikoroJohn DaleJohn DoveyMaureen KeableDavid and Rachel MusgroveJoan and Sidney Smith
Friends
Anne BaxendaleRobert and Hilary BruceJoan HackettRobert and Gill Harding-PayneMrs Dorothy PatrickPeter and Marie RollasonSandy Shaw
FRIENDS OF KSO
YOUR SUPPORT
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YOUR SUPPORT
OTHER WAYS TO SUPPORT US
Sponsorship
One way in which you, our audience, can help us very effectively is through sponsorship. Anyone can be a sponsor, and any level of support—from corporate sponsorship of a whole concert to individual backing of a particular section or musician—is enormously valuable to us. We offer a variety of benefits to sponsors tailored especially to their needs, such as programme and website advertising, guest tickets, and assistance with entertaining.
For further details about sponsoring KSO, please speak to any member of the orchestra, email [email protected] or call James Wheeler on 07808 590176.
The KSO Endowment Trust
An Endowment Trust has been established by Kensington Symphony Orchestra in order to enhance the orchestra’s ability to achieve its charitable objectives in the long term.
The Trust will manage a capital fund derived from donations and legacies. Each year, the Trustees will make grants from its income to assist important KSO projects and activities, such as commissioning new music, which would be impossible to finance relying on concert funds alone.
Our aim is to raise at least £100,000 over the first ten years. We would be pleased to hear from individuals or organisations who would like to donate any sum, large or small, and would also be keen to talk to anyone who might consider recognising KSO’s work in their will.
For further information, please email [email protected] or telephone Neil Ritson on 07887 987711.
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First ViolinAlan TuckwoodLouise RingroseMatthew HickmanVidal Bar-KarSusan KnightSabina WagstylAriane TodesHeather BinghamJason WeirClaire DoveySarah CrickSarah LinnellSarah HackettAdam FergusonBronwen Fisher
Second ViolinDavid PievskyAdrian GordonHelen TurnellFrançoise RobinsonRufus RottenbergRichard SheahanJudith Ní BhreasláinSarah TurnerJeremy BradshawElizabeth BellJill IvesAntonio De StefanoHannah ThomasDanielle DawsonVeryan Wheeler
ViolaBeccy Spencer Guy RaybouldCamilla Thornton Sally RandallSonya BrazierFelix HearnJane Spencer-Davis Liz Lavercombe Alison NethsinghaPhil CooperLucy EllisTom Philpott
CelloJoseph SpoonerRos RobertsAnnie Marr-JohnsonRosie GoddardDavid BaxendaleAnna HamiltonPeter NagleCat MugeVanessa HadleyAnna UnwinEllie DouglasEmily Rice
Double BassSteph FlemingOliver BatesLauren BakerGisella FerrariPhil Chandler
FluteJudith JeromeMike Copperwhite
OboeCharles BrenanSarah Bruce
Cor AnglaisChris Astles
ClarinetChris HorrilClaire Baughan
Bass ClarinetGraham Elliott
E-flat ClarinetClaire Baughan
BassoonNick RampleySheila Wallace
ContrabassoonSheila Wallace
Music DirectorRussell Keable
TrusteesDavid BaxendaleZen EdwardsChris HorrilPeter NagleHeather PawsonNick RampleyNeil RitsonRichard SheahanJames Wheeler
Event TeamChris AstlesZen EdwardsPeter NagleBeccy Spencer
Marketing TeamJeremy BradshawPhil ChandlerJo JohnsonDavid MusgroveLouise Ringrose
Membership TeamPhil CambridgeCat MugeNeil Ritson
ProgrammesDavid Musgrove
ORCHESTRA
French HornJim MoffatHeather PawsonEd CornRichard Charlton
TrumpetSteve WillcoxJohn HackettJonathan SpencerLeanne Thompson
TrombonePhil CambridgeKen McGregor
Bass TromboneDavid Musgrove
TubaNeil Wharmby
TimpaniAndrew Barnard
PercussionTim AldenSimon Willcox
PianoPeter Archontides
HarpDaniel de Fry
TONIGHT’S PERFORMERS
KSO2: Kensington and Kampala Symphony Orchestras
We continue to maintain our commitment to Building Bridges Through Music, a charitable project supported by Musequality, through which we seek opportunities to help Ugandan musicians in Kampala. Our specific focus is on the development of the Kampala Symphony Orchestra, our “KSO” namesake.
We are pleased to report on the success of providing additional instruments for the students in Kampala. With the generous assistance of the Friends of Kampala Music School for transport, six quality brass and string instruments have arrived in Kampala, donated by members and friends of KSO.
These instruments helped young cellists, violinists and brass players through their early training years in the UK and have since been resting unused in cupboards for a number of years. Now they can accelerate the opportunity for more students in Kampala to learn.
We are delighted to be able to help expand the resources for the developing symphony orchestra within Kampala Music School.
After the inaugural first symphony orchestra concert conducted by Russell Keable in September 2010, it is also the range and ambition of the orchestra’s 2011 performance schedule that continues to grow. The photos show a rehearsal for KSO’s most recent performance, for the tenth anniversary celebrations for the “Pianos for Uganda” scheme. Here, the orchestra and choir are rehearsing Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia, conducted by Musical Director Fred Musoke Kiggundu.
Thank you to all the members of KSO for their generous contributions so far. The provision of wind and string coaches in Kampala is our next ambition.
For more information please contact a member of the Trustees, or Helen Turnell at [email protected].
Also please visit our charity partner at:
www.musequality.org
Monday, 17 October 2011STEPHEN GOSS The Shard (World première)PETER MAXWELL DAVIES Symphony No. 5RACHMANINOV Symphony No. 2
Monday, 28 November 2011ARVO PÄRT Cantus in memoriam Benjamin BrittenSHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 9VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 6
Tuesday, 24 January 2012(At Cadogan Hall, with soloist Philip Higham)HINDEMITH Concert Music for Strings and BrassBRAHMS Variations on a Theme of HaydnDVOŘÁK Cello Concerto
Saturday, 10 March 2012(With guest conductor William Carslake)Programme to include:WALTON Symphony No. 2
Monday, 14 May 2012PUCCINI Tosca
Monday, 11 June 2012PETER NAGLE The Gull Catchers (World première)SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7BRAHMS Symphony No. 1
All concerts at 7.30pm, St. John’s, Smith Square unless otherwise stated
Registered charity No. 1069620
