Music for a Summer Evening
Sunday 9 July 2006
at St Martin's Church, Trevose Gardens, Nottingham, NG5 3FU
The Summer Concert presented a cheerful, entertaining programme. There was plenty of attractive and appealing music on offer, featuring Bob Chilcott's The Making of the Drum. Inspired by a visit to Uganda, where the drum is regarded as a living spirit, this work sets five poems by Edward Kamau Brathwaite which describe the whole process, from the choice of materials to the finished product. The music varies from the lively and rhythmic to the still and reverential, and involves the use of various ethnic percussion instruments.
Mozart's 250th Anniversary was being marked with the inclusion of The Magic Carpet. Renowned for his sense of humour and fun, we're quite sure that Wolfgang Amadeus would heartily approve of this little musical joke, which takes a well-known operatic overture and revamps it for voices to a text which runs like a tourist agent's spiel, to hilarious effect.