Pomp and Circumstance

Aaaand whooops! I had intended to get this sorted on Sunday, but procrastination and online gaming got the better of me...

We had our orchestra summer concert this weekend - a fabulous evening devoted to the Last Night of the Proms. The first half was the serious music - the Hornpipe from Handel's Water Music, The Walk to Paradise Garden from A Village Romeo and Juliet by Delius, and Elgar's Enigma Variations (we played twelve out of the fourteen variations).

Then we all donned additional colourful and / or patriotic gear (I don't think my Chinese jacket or John's fez counted as British, but we could probably argue British Empire, just!), including our two lead violins, who dressed up as a King and Queen (and, of course, we all stood when they came in!), and one of the other violins who donned a dressing gown and a deer stalker hat. Plenty of sparkly wigs and tinsel were also in evidence, and a number of the audience had also got dressed up. We opened the second half with Pomp and Circumstance, and the audience got their vocal chords in gear with Land of Hope and Glory.

Then the Sea Shanties, with everyone bobbing up and down for the hornpipe, and the obligatory horns and squeakers (I might have contributed to that a little bit - the oboe doesn't play until 64 bars into it, so I had enough time to blow a party squeaker :-) ). The clarinet cadenza was thoroughly played up, with the orchestra members settling down with books, with knitting, cleaning instruments, etc. The conductor actually got out a vacuum and cleared his podium of the various bits of glitter which had fallen on it through the course of the evening... Rule Britannia at the end went brilliantly - even if most of the brass managed to miss out the late arranged repeat (and were able to cover for it by the conductor turning to the audience and tell them that we were starting again because they weren't singing loud enough!).

Then Jerusalem, God Save the Queen and Auld Lang Syne, and the concert was all over, bar the vacuuming up of the glitter and silly string and generally trying to get the church back into a state in which it could hold a service the next morning!

Overall, it was a fantastic concert - everyone really enjoyed themselves, and we have already asked whether we are going to do it again next year! There may even be photos - there were a few people with cameras out, and if any of them find their way to the orchestra website, I will post a link.

I just wonder whether the organist found the squeaky balloon that went down the back of the organ pipes in the middle of the Sunday service...

Orchestra is therefore over for the summer - we have a long gap until we go back at the beginning of February - I shall have to make sure that I don't let myself get too rusty! And possibly even take the time off to have another go at learning the accordion...