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Concert goes with a bang |
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Sailing ships, voices shouting and cannons firing, set the scene and atmosphere, if not the danger, for the appreciative audience at Phoenix Brass’ Trafalgar 200 Concert. The Band used modern technology and effects to re-create the beginning of the battle then marched into the John O’Gaunt Community Technology College Hall to the stirring strains of ‘Hearts of Oak’ and ‘Life on the Ocean Wave’ on the day after the anniversary.
MD David Watson had chosen a program to not only commemorate the battle, with the marches ‘Trafalgar’ and ‘Viscount Nelson’, but also to remind people of our closeness to the sea, paying tributes to the sea traders and explorers, with ‘Cargoes’, based on John Masefield’s poem, and ‘Conquest of Paradise ‘from the motion picture ‘1492’. It also included light-hearted modern music such as ‘Beyond the Sea’, ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘Stranger on the Shore’, a duet performed by Cornet players Stephanie Hunter and Stephanie White. The not so modern Gilbert and Sullivan operettas also provided enjoyable entertainment with ‘HMS Pinafore’ and ‘Sullivan at Sea - a trip for trombones’, but one in which all the band exercised their talents.
The true songs of the sea were not forgotten with Peter Williams performing a wonderful solo of ‘Blow the Wind Southerly’ on trombone, and the full band involved in Gordon Langford’s demanding arrangement, ‘Fantasy on British Sea Songs’.
The Band also remembered the French sailors who died at the battle, by playing ‘Bouquet de Paris’, a collection of French songs, before approaching the finale of a rousing arrangement of ‘Rule Britannia’, with the audience waving their union jacks, and, after an enactment of the death of Admiral Nelson, an arrangement by bandsman Anthony Palmer of the ‘Evening Hymn and Last Post’ to the dimming of the hall lights. With their flags waving the audience demanded an encore and Phoenix Brass duly obliged with Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance No. 1’, allowing them again to be patriotic and leave the hall in high spirits. |