The “superorchestra”…or “Our friends in the south”

Mar 01, 2012

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Music Nation 4th March 2012 It’s a measure of the progress of ‘normalisation’ in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement, that the BBC Music Nation event which sees the Ulster Orchestra joined on stage by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, will happen with the attention firmly on the music – and without the attachment of any heavy handed symbolism. I first came to Belfast in 1996, when our venue for this event, the Belfast Waterfront, was still being built. Armoured police and army Land Rovers were still rumbling up and down Royal Avenue, the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, and Belfast felt neglected and uneasy. The Waterfront became a symbol of the new optimism in the late 1990s as the peace process gathered momentum and the promise of those times is now realised in a rejuvenated city and a thrivin…

”Voices of Spring”

Jan 03, 2012

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  Is it too soon to be looking for signs of spring? The Christmas tree has yet to be taken outside to begin its sad descent into yellowing decay, and the house disrobed of all seasonal trappings and I’m already looking for the first shoots of wild garlic bravely poking forth on our river bank.   The prematurely anticipated change in the season brings with it a new mental energy too, new things to think about practicing, new programmes to prepare for, and maybe a few reappraisals of old ways.   Much of the season just gone is of course about tradition and permanence, rather than the new. Anyone watching this year’s New Year’s Day concert from Vienna is seeing one of the world’s iconic cultural events, but one that is virtually unchanged from year to year, even from one century to another. This is of…

Musical Memories

Oct 24, 2011

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I can’t believe how fast these last twelve months have passed. It seems like only last week that we were performing Mahler’s fifth symphony at Belfast Festival at Queen’s and every week was an ongoing trial chasing the 1st horn position. But it has been a year and thankfully I’m now sitting in the much sought after chair, and here we are back to Festival time. I remember as a young boy how long a whole year seemed and now as I get older it is Christmas, Easter, Summer and back to Christmas again in a flash. As every year passes I forget certain events, but then out of the blue I will hear certain music that triggers a past event that was previously lost in the vaults of my mind.  This week at the Festival we are teaming up with our young colleagues from the Ulster Youth Orchestra and Ulster Youth Choir, for a perf…

Tasmin and transcendence

Oct 22, 2011

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 Something happened during tonight’s show.  Something which doesn’t happen every time we go on stage. Something which, for me at least, might only truly happen a few times a season.Towards the end of the slow movement of Elgar’s autumnal epic Violin Concerto, I felt that special sensation of time stopping, of the music taking me, and everyone else in the hall to places far removed from Bedford St. That strangely contradictory state of a very personal response, within a collective experience. Just occasionally, music can be so perfectly conceived, and so ideally delivered, that mere observations of skill, individual technique, and interpretation become meaningless. We become part of that great shared transcendence that music allows us. Just for a few moments, we leave everything behind us. Not in a Classic FM–music…

MacGregor Gershwin CD

Oct 15, 2011

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If you were fortunate enough to hear Joanna MacGregor play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the UO at the Waterfront last night and would like to hear her do so again, her recording of the piece has recently been re–released on Warner Classics (2564678306). Even more enticingly, the recording is of the original, pared–down jazz band scoring, not the bigger, blowsier Grofe orchestration usually heard in concert. This two–CD set is at budget–price, and also includes MacGregor playing the Piano Concerto and a selection of Gershwin’s solo piano pieces. Highly recommended.