Our last weekend of concerts before our summer break will be a busy one – guitar and oboe on the 5th and the glorious basset horns, accompanied by a bassonist, on the 6th.
5th July – 6pm – Declan Hickey and Ellen Wilkinson
As part of our Rush Hour concert series promoting young musicians and composers, Declan and Ellen have a really exciting programme of 20th century music composed almost exclusively for the guitar and oboe.
It will include a World Premiere – Elisabeth Lutyens’ Déroulement, composed in 1980 – plus Eleanor Alberga‘s Resolution; Tom Eastwood‘s Uirapurù (in which the oboe plays the role of the bird – the guitar is a hunter trying to capture it) and Oran Johnson’s ‘Woodcolours’, inspired by abstract expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler’s woodcuts. And in a throw back to the 19th century, Declan will the give his ‘new’ 19th century guitar one of its very first outings in Naploéon Coste’s Le Montagnard.
£15 to include a FREE glass of wine – 6pm on 5th July – book here.
6th July – 6.30 pm – the Vauxhall Band Basset Horn Trio
In the mid 1700s, if you had any pretensions to belong to ‘society’ the place to be seen was in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, a twelve acre wooded site just south of the Thames at Vauxhall where the entrepreneur, Jonathan Tyer, set up his gardens.
The gardens boasted their own orchestra (playing music by Thomas Arne and Tyer’s good friend George Frederick Handel), a large piazza where the beau monde could mingle and ‘be seen’, supper boxes which enabled not only fashionable dining but discreet dalliance, decorations for the boxes and main buildings by another of Tyer’s good friends, William Hogarth – and, most important of all, the patronage of the Prince of Wales, the leader of the fashionable set.
For the sixty odd years that the gardens were at their height they could expect over 1,000 visitors a night – every one of them paying (in today’s money) £10-15 without food for their evening. If you would like to know more about the evenings – and the ‘rip off ‘ food that was served – check in to this blog that I posted before last year’s basset horn concert.
The modern Vauxhall Band brings together leading period instrumentalists to recreate the music once played by the orchestras in Vauxhall, Ranelagh and Marylebone gardens. And the Vauxhall Band Basset Horn Trio, Katherine Spencer, Sarah Thurlow and Fiona Mitchell, focuses in on the rarely heard, delightfully ‘bent’ basset horns with their colourful, earthy tones – this year to be joined by Chris Rawley and his collection of 18th and 19th century bassoons.
As last year, supper will aim to give a flavour of supper in the gardens – without being quite so mean!
Book here for the Basset Horns on 6th July – £30 to include supper and wine.
Meanwhile, do not forget our garden opening later this month on Sunday June 22nd
On June 22nd the Hampstead Lane garden will be open for the National Gardens Scheme, complete with tea, delicious home made cakes – and music!
Guitarist James McClusky, the Secret Life Saxophone Quartet and then, later in the afternoon, William Jack and his jazz cello.
£5 entry to include your cup of tea – 12 noon – 6pm – and all for a very good cause! Book here or pay on the door.
The Barnes Concert Band
Andrea Lea makes up, along with festival director Greg Batlseer, the moving force that is the London Handel Festival. Handel enthusiasts among you already know all about the festival, for which I am a keen volunteer. But for anyone who doesn’t, do check in to their site to find out about this year’s amazing festival what is coming up in the future.
But Andrea has another life. In fact Andrea has several other lives but one of them is as a long standing member and committee chair of the Barnes Concert Band. The band was fifty years old this year and to celebrate they have made the most delightful video about themselves that you can watch here on YouTube. As Andrea says, there are no doubt dozens of amateur groups like the Barnes Concert Band up and down the country but I must admit that I was entranced by this one.
The band, made up of brass, woodwind and percussion, was founded in 1975 by Bob Drane, a retired soldier and erstwhile military trombonist who lived in Barnes. With retirement looming, Bob acquired a second hand trombone, did some practice and connected with other local players – and by 1977 they had a band. They also had a bandmaster with a strong connection to the Kneller Hall Royal School of Military Music nearby in Twickenham, a connection that has remained through the years, the band’s current muscial director, Daryle Lowden being a graduate of the school.
The majority of the band are highly experienced amateurs, many of them ‘returners’ (people who played an instrument in their youth, gave it up and returned to it in later life) with a reasonable sprinkling of professional musicians. Most are over 50 but certainly not exclusively, with some younger members joining because a parent already played in the band. They are very welcoming and supportive of new players provided they are prepared to commit to a two hour rehearsal each week, to practice and to be available to fulfill their quite busy concert schedule.
This takes them all over Richmond and Barnes with a wide range of pretty challenging repertoire; on occasion they venture as far afield as Windsor or Regents Park – and, obviously, out on the streets at Christmas. They also break down into a number of mini bands who work both with children and with older and more vulnerable members of the community. Although their standards are totally professional the band appears to be a large and very happy family who enjoy every minute of their music making together. Have a listen to just five minutes of their anniversary video and you will see what I mean.
How delightful is that – and how I hope that Andrea is right and that there are many other such bands around the country having so much fun and giving so much joy to others.
For other events see our Upcoming Events page.
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