Category Archives: Music

Posts on musical topics

Church, Music

Typical – Big Concert and Richard Gets a Cough

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So with our big Autumn Concert coming up tomorrow, what was a slightly sore throat on Wednesday night has progressed through occasional coughing, to a delightful tickly cough today – problem is that it’s just the kind of cough that can reduce me to a coughing fit if I push my singing voice in the wrong way. Fingers crossed it improves before tomorrow night!

Anyway, whether it gets worse or better, tomorrow night is the St James Church Choir Autumn Concert in the Church. There are fifteen items on the programme – so it shouldn’t be too long before the audience can get across to the finger buffet in the Parish Centre. There is a good mix of choir and solo items, including a big finish with Morte Christe followed by O Thou the Central Orb – which is why I don’t particularly want to have a tickly cough on the night!

All proceeds to the Conservation Appeal too. Kick off is 7:30pm, and as far as I am aware tickets will be on the door too.

Music

Voces8 Playing Trains

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A couple of years ago I blogged about Voces Cantabiles a choir run by the two sons of a couple who attend St James who played a couple of concerts for the Church, the second of which ended up being by candlelight thanks to a power cut. The choir has gone from strength to strength winning a number of prizes around the world. They also have a smaller ensemble known as Voces8 consisting of just eight singers who have won awards in their own right. Digging around on YouTube I found that they now have their own channel where they are steadily uploading examples of their performances, and showing their range. Everything from this performance of The Lamb by John Taverner – something that I know from experience is fiendishly difficult. At the other end of the spectrum you have their latest video – “I’m a Trainâ€?.

Church, Music

Dolly Varden at St James’

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Dolly Varden

Following on from the concert by the MacGregors earlier in the month, last night we had a similar evening, this time with Dolly Varden (well most of them – Matt the drummer isn’t on this tour) a band based in Chicago.

In terms of number of attendees it was almost identical to the number of people who came along to the previous concert, but with almost no overlap. Aside from us and another couple of people who helped out with the MacGregors there were only two people who attended both concerts.

Music wise Dolly Varden are somewhat different too – and equally difficult to categorise. There is a good deal of country influence, but equally hints of rock creeping in there too. Having said that it was great show and a great way to spend a Tuesday evening. Indeed we even came away with three of their albums bought after the show!

The band definitely seem to be on a whistle-stop tour. They had come to us from a concert the night before in Leeds, and the day before had been in Edinburgh. From us they were heading for Wales via London before some of the band head on to another concert in Spain. Speaking to a couple of the band members they had concerts every night for the entire tour and to some extent had had no chance to catch their breath since arriving from the US.

I took a few pictures of the show, and also a whole load of video clips. The pictures are available in our photo gallery as usual – the video hit somewhat of a snag in that I’ve got slightly too much footage for YouTube so I’m going to need to do a bit of re-editing to fit in with their length requirements. Rather than cut it I may well edit it into two sequences rather than just the one. Hopefully that should be posted within the next couple of days.

Movies & TV, Music

The David Arnold James Bond Project

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Going through the new releases on iTunes today, I came across Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project which has finally got an iTunes release.

I’ve got the original CD release back from 1997, which I picked up after seeing a documentary about the making of the album. Although David Arnold is now very much associated with James Bond having written the soundtrack for every James Bond film since Tomorrow Never Dies. This is the album that got him the job – John Barry having recommended him after hearing this album.

The album is eleven tracks, each a reworking of a well known James Bond song, but performed by a contemporary artist. So in amongst my favourites amongst the tracks we have a Chrissie Hynde take on Live and Let Die, Martin Fry doing Thunderball, and Propellerheads covering On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.