Last Saturday Leighton Buzzard Music Club hosted another in their excellent series of classical concerts by upcoming musicians with Anthony Brown playing saxophone accompanied by Leo Nicholson playing piano. Readers may remember Leo Nicholson visited Leighton last year with flautist Rosanna Ter-Berg, which was a delightful concert. This time he accompanied a different performer, again to captivating effect.
Not much music is (even now) written for the saxophone, so Mr Brown has to seek repertoire, which leads him down less trodden footpaths of music creation. This truffling produced a concert which was an engaging and eclectic mixture of short pieces, mainly French and English and mainly twentieth century.
In order, we enjoyed: ‘Michelangelo ‘70’ by Astor Piazzolla (arr. Brown), this had a Big Band feel, edgy and plummy by turns on the sax; ‘And everything is still … ’ (2010) by Andy Scott, a simple air returning in increasingly energetic and decorated variations; ‘Three Preludes’ (1926) by George Gershwin, quintessentially Jazz Age; ‘Histoires’ (1922) by Jacques Ibert; ‘Gentle dreams’ (1987) by Dave Heath, a lullaby with hints of a Celtic feel and of Coltrane; ‘Tableaux de Provence’ (1948-55) by Paule Maurice, a piece written for the saxophone included to celebrate Adolphe Sax’s centenary; ‘Two elegies framing a shout’ (1994) by Mark-Anthony Turnage, angular, with a little dirty sax; ‘Glass’ (1998) by Graham Fitkin, the sax runs a gentle melody around the the piano; ‘Fantasie Op 89’ (1863) by Jean-Baptiste Singelée, cadenzas and trills galore; ‘After the tryst’ (1995) by James MacMillan, full of sea birds crying and winds soughing; ‘Scaramouche’ (1937) by Darius Milhaud, opera bouffe and great fun; finally ‘Le lievre et la tortue’ (1957) by Pierre-Max Dubois; as encore they let rip with a little more Gershwin – ‘I got rhythm’.
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Published by Judi Moore
Hi there,
I hope you find something to interest you here.
In December 2017 I published my fourth book – ‘Wonders will never cease’. It’s a satirical campus novel set in the fictional Ariel University in 1985. If you enjoyed Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse novels, Willy Russell’s ‘Educating Rita’, David Lodge’s campus novels or Malcolm Bradbury’s ‘The History Man’ back in the day, you may enjoy revisiting the ivory towers of 1980s’ academe thirty years on. See what you think.
“It is December, 1985. The year is winding gently towards its close until Fergus Girvan, a Classicist at Ariel University, finds his research has been stolen by the man who is also seeking to steal his daughter. But which man is, actually, the more unscrupulous of the two? And is there hope for either of them?”
In the autumn of 2015 I published a volume of short fiction: 'Ice Cold Passion and other stories'. I am also the author of novella 'Little Mouse', a shortish piece of historical fiction which I published in 2014 and, a sequel to it, 'Is death really necessary?', my eco thriller set in the near future and which, confusingly, I published in 2009.
All the books are available from all good online bookshops and FeedARead on paper, and as e-books on Kindle.
On a semi-regular basis, and about a month after the event, I post here reviews which I do for Big Al & Pals, the premier reviewer of indie books, based in the States. My interests tend to thrillers, SF, magic realism and other quirky stuff.
On this blog are also posted the reviews I did for Leighton Buzzard Music Club over some five years up to the end of 2015. LBMC present annual seasons of eight monthly chamber music concerts at the Library Theatre in Leighton Buzzard, Bucks. They select young musicians just beginning to make their name - and the concerts are usually magnificent. I was very proud to be associated with them.
I review other music, books, theatre and exhibitions which I've particularly enjoyed.
BTW - it says the link to Facebook is broken. I dispute that. Click it and see, why not?
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Judi Moore 