music

August 18, 2017

Prom 35 – John Wilson conducts Oklahoma!

Every prom season I take a look to see what the John Wilson and his orchestra will be offering and this years performance of Oklahoma was superb.

A well chosen cast including Belinda Lang & comedian Marcus Brigstocke supported the orchestra fantastically. The sounds from both the singers and orchestra was wonderfully rich – full of life and energy. A few dodgy american accents but that can be forgiven for the skills of the singers.

My one small downside – we were sat in the Grand Tier box 39 which was right in line with the front of the stage. This meant acoustics of the snare drum were bad. The sound was returning from the back wall to my ears a few milliseconds behind everything else. Annoying for parts with loud snare – but otherwise fine.

As usual an excellent evening with John Wilson and his Orchestra. Will be back again next year I hope.

If you have access to BBC IPlayer – Prom 35 Oklahoma

July 30, 2017

Prom 8 – Celebrating John Williams

I never thought I would get to use my tickets for prom 8 – but the flight gods smiled at the right time and I got a “reasonable” ticket price over for a quick 23hr jaunt to London.

Prom 8 was a celebration of the work of John Williams. We didnt get a chance to grab a programme on the way in – so were guessing as the lights went down what the running order would be. What we be a good opener, what would end the show well.

Nobody was disappointed. Starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark, ending with three pieces from Star Wars, and filled out with lesser known works in the middle from The Terminal, Catch Me if you Can & The Witches of Eastwick.

The soloists during the evening all came from the various BBC young talent programmes. There were great soloists – but some of their body movements were slightly off putting…..

The encore was a fantastic surprise, after finishing off the concert with the three star wars tracks, the crowd wanted more and more – so out came the Cantina Theme from the first star wars movie. A great big busting number to end the night.

The prom is on the BBC Iplayer if you have access here

The full programme :

John Williams
Raider’s March from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (5 mins)
Overture to ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’ (4 mins)
Main Theme from ‘Jaws’ (3 mins)
March from ‘Superman’ (4 mins)
Suite for Cello and Orchestra from Memoirs of a Geisha: No. 1 Sayuri’s Theme (5 mins)
The Tale of Viktor Navorski from ‘The Terminal’ (4 mins)
Dartmoor, 1912 from ‘War Horse’ (7 mins)
‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ – Hedwig’s Theme (5 mins)
A Child’s Tale: Suite from the BFG (5 mins)
Flying Theme from ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’ (4 mins)

INTERVAL

John Williams
Suite from J.F.K., 1st mvt: Theme from J.F.K (4 mins)
Prayer for Peace from ‘Munich’ (4 mins)
Dry Your Tears, Afrika from ‘Amistad’ (4 mins)
Devil’s Dance from ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ (5 mins)
Escapades (No. 3) for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra from ‘Catch me if you Can’ (5 mins)
March of the Resistance from ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ (2 mins)
Rey’s Theme from ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ (3 mins)
Main Title from ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ (4 mins)

July 30, 2017July 30, 2017

moving bass to treble clef

The bain of main life are musical notes in base clef. At a slow speed I can read and play it, but at high speed – nah. It never quite works out well enough. Previously to convert the notes – I had used to a *cough* dodgy *cough* version of a windows based notation program and a licensed version of PhotoScore from Neuratron.

Since I dont have a windows VM any more on my mac it was time to look for alternatives. This time I tried the open source software MuseScore. I scanned my notes with PhotoScore, saved into XML and imported. A few clicks later and some tidyup and I had the treble clef notes I wanted.

It took a few attempts to get the MuseScore installer downloaded due to some ftp disconnects – but have the patience and give it a go.

By Etsnyman (Screenshot) [CC0 or GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

May 7, 2017

moving the music

Last weekend I played my first concert with a new group – Musik Verein Eichenau. Its nice having other euphoniums to play with. The sound we can make is awesome 🙂

Also new band – means new band uniform.

(thanks to Roger @ Celticon Photography for the pic)

May 6, 2017

tickets for last night of the proms

Why post about the last night of the proms in May? I’m off to a wedding in the UK that happens to be a few nights before the last night, so I’ve started doing my research on getting hold of some tickets without having the time to be a full season ticket holder. My first option is gonna be the open ballot. Second option is going to be a resale website somewhere. Third option – dont know yet (but I might queue all day if the weather is dry and try for a promer ticket)

Theres a few other proms in the series I may try and head over for if I can get tickets which go on general sale May 13th. Prom 34/35 is John Wilson and his orchestra performing Oklahoma. His take on big tunes is fantastic and his musicians adds a huge sound to anything they perform.