Latest news with #LondonSymphonyOrchestra
Pembrokeshire Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Pembrokeshire Herald
Pembroke Dock man jailed after defrauding vulnerable victim out of thousands
A CHILDREN'S chorus brought a packed St Davids Cathedral to life on Saturday (May 24) as this year's Cathedral Music Festival officially got underway. The performance marked the launch of the 2025 festival and was led by renowned choral director Suzzie Vango, whose energy and enthusiasm inspired dozens of young performers from across Pembrokeshire. Singing beneath the towering cathedral organ and the historic nave's vaulted ceiling, the children delivered a programme of uplifting and challenging repertoire to a captivated audience. The concert followed a lively morning performance from the choristers in the North Transept, where songs from The Lion King and Adele were among the crowd favourites during the 'Choristers Unplugged' session. Suzzie Vango, who has worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Choirs and the AB Choir Directors, led the evening performance with warmth and precision. Under her direction, the children's voices filled the ancient building with powerful harmonies and joyful expression. Speaking to The Herald after the concert, one audience member said: 'It was incredibly moving to see so many young people singing their hearts out in such a beautiful setting. You could see how proud their families were.' The children's chorus is just one part of this year's ambitious festival programme, which continues until Wednesday (May 28). Performers include the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, The Queen's Six, clarinettist Emma Johnson, and a range of vocal and instrumental ensembles. The organisers say the aim of the festival is to celebrate musical excellence while making performances accessible to local people. Children under 18 were given free entry to the launch concert. The Cathedral Music Festival, now in its 44th year, is one of the highlights of the cultural calendar in West Wales and draws audiences from across the UK. Tickets for remaining events are available from the cathedral's website and box office.
Pembrokeshire Herald
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Pembrokeshire Herald
Young voices light up cathedral as children's chorus launches 2025 music festival
A CHILDREN'S chorus brought a packed St Davids Cathedral to life on Saturday (May 24) as this year's Cathedral Music Festival officially got underway. The performance marked the launch of the 2025 festival and was led by renowned choral director Suzzie Vango, whose energy and enthusiasm inspired dozens of young performers from across Pembrokeshire. Singing beneath the towering cathedral organ and the historic nave's vaulted ceiling, the children delivered a programme of uplifting and challenging repertoire to a captivated audience. The concert followed a lively morning performance from the choristers in the North Transept, where songs from The Lion King and Adele were among the crowd favourites during the 'Choristers Unplugged' session. Suzzie Vango, who has worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Choirs and the AB Choir Directors, led the evening performance with warmth and precision. Under her direction, the children's voices filled the ancient building with powerful harmonies and joyful expression. Speaking to The Herald after the concert, one audience member said: 'It was incredibly moving to see so many young people singing their hearts out in such a beautiful setting. You could see how proud their families were.' The children's chorus is just one part of this year's ambitious festival programme, which continues until Wednesday (May 28). Performers include the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, The Queen's Six, clarinettist Emma Johnson, and a range of vocal and instrumental ensembles. The organisers say the aim of the festival is to celebrate musical excellence while making performances accessible to local people. Children under 18 were given free entry to the launch concert. The Cathedral Music Festival, now in its 44th year, is one of the highlights of the cultural calendar in West Wales and draws audiences from across the UK. Tickets for remaining events are available from the cathedral's website and box office.
The Guardian
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
LSO/Dudamel/Rebeka review – relentless orchestral fireworks and bright moments
Launching a concert with Strauss's Don Juan makes quite a statement: those madcap opening seconds, the music scrambling from the bottom of the orchestra in a bravura sweep before blooming into an irresistibly cavalier and heroic melody. It seemed a very Gustavo Dudamel way for the starry conductor to begin his first London appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra, after concerts in Spain last week. Dudamel drove the music hard and fast: it was full of firework explosions that dissolved into sparkling blurs of light. On one level it was thrilling. On another, it soon began to feel a little narrow. Dudamel let the brightest moments scythe through the texture – an ear-splitting glockenspiel, a brief but brazen trumpet solo – and yet the general orchestral sound was so thickly blended as to be almost homogenised. There was little sense of the music bubbling with detail, and a limited depth to the sound. This might not have mattered so much had the concert not been entirely of music by Strauss and Ravel, two of the 20th century's most meticulous musical colourists. At least the opening of Ravel's Shéhérazade showed that the orchestra could still play quietly. The soprano soloist was Marina Rebeka. Spinning out long, fluid lines, she captured the languid quality of these songs beautifully but was less convincing in conveying the wordiness of their poetry or the sense of wanderlust that drives the first song in particular. Instrumental highlights included Gareth Davies's flute solos in the second movement, first energised, then returning quiet and distant at the end. The orchestral palette broadened after the interval for Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole, with a beguiling softness to the mesmerising repeated figure in the first movement, and a sultriness in the Habanera that put the taut, shiny finale into relief. Finally there was the orchestral suite from Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier, in which the central waltz was full of character but the climactic music was pushed onwards relentlessly. The whole concert was pacy and entertaining, but it left the impression that the LSO is a huge paintbox, the darkest and softest colours of which Dudamel has only just begun to explore.
Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
LSO/Dudamel review — an inspired conductor finds his mojo again
★★★★★Churlishly I considered knocking a star off the rating for this gloriously exuberant fiesta of a concert because the Barbican audience weren't really given anything profound or meaty, dark or foreboding, to ponder. But honestly, who needs soul-baring symphonies when you have Gustavo Dudamel guiding, galvanising and coaxing the London Symphony Orchestra through a succession of Ravel and Strauss scores that shimmered with sensuality and showcased virtuosity all round the band? You can sometimes tell what a concert is going to be like from the first bar of music. This one was launched by a surge of notes so exhilarating yet so precisely co-ordinated that you forgot for a moment how difficult it is for some conductors to start Strauss's Don Juan at all.
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Trombone player on one of the most famous pop songs of all time leaves behind just £1,000 in his will after his death aged 79
A respected orchestra musician who played trombone on one of the most famous songs in pop music history left £1,000 in his will after dying aged 79, it has emerged. Peter Bassano was among the performers on The Beatles ' 1968 hit single Hey Jude that topped the charts worldwide and sold an estimated 8million copies. Mr Bassano, who also worked as a conductor, lecturer and author, spoke in the past about how his involvement in the Fab Four track earned him more than anything else. Tributes were paid after his death on February 1 this year, and now details of the legacy he left have been revealed. Documents show the estate he bequeathed was worth £1,000, to be shared equally between his children, the Sun reported. Mr Bassano, who was a member and fellow of the Royal College of Music, previously wrote of being inspired to pursue music after watching the late Queen Elizabeth II 's coronation in 1953. And he was intrigued by the trombone when seeing Salvation Army bands marching by during his childhood in Southend, Essex. His posts during his career included being music director of the Oxford University Sinfonietta, performing in the London Symphony Orchestra for 27 years and serving as head of brass at the Royal College of Music between 1993 and 2004. He was married to renowned viola player Kathryn Bassano, a former member of the Academy of St Martins in the Fields and who played on soundtracks for Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings films. The couple told in 2014 of being declared bankrupt and forced to leave their six-bedroom house in the Chilterns where they had lived for 16 years. Mr Bassano said his troubles began when he had to borrow heavily after becoming embroiled in a legal battle over the cost of an extension to the house in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. He told the Mail on Sunday at the time: 'The extension was intended to increase the value of the house but once we got involved in litigation, it was difficult to withdraw without incurring further costs. 'I don't blame anyone else for our financial predicament. But we were hit by a perfect storm of the banking crisis, my earnings dropping and a huge fall in the value of the house.' As well as his performing and conducting activities, Mr Bassano also published several books - including a memoir called Before The Music Stopped that covered his work with rock bands including The Beatles and the Bee Gees. Recording sessions for Hey Jude - which would be The Beatles' first release on their newly founded record label Apple - took place in London in July 1968. While the band initially rehearsed the song and taped demo tracks at their usual base of EMI Studios at Abbey Road in St John's Wood, north-west London, the main recordings including a orchestra were carried out at Trident Studios in Soho. Mr Bassano not only played trombone as part of the orchestral backing, he was also among those singing along to its 'Na, na, na, na-na-na-na' chorus outro. He spoke about the experience in a podcast interview in 2022, recalling: 'I turned up with my trombone and producer George Martin said, "All I want you to do is play four notes consecutively". 'We did that - that was straightforward. Then he said he wanted us to sing. 'We learnt it all and sang away. I thought, this sounds awful, it won't get anywhere. 'John Lennon brought out a crate of beer with him and it became a party. My critical appraisal was proven to be totally incorrect.' Hey Jude, with B-side Revolution, was released on August 30 1968 in Britain, along with three other launch releases by Apple Records - Mary Hopkin's Those Were The Days, Sour Milk Sea by Jackie Lomax and the Black Dyke Mills Band's Thingumybob. Copies of each were sent in gift-wrapped boxes to the Queen and other members of the royal family, as well as then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Beatles also publicised the release of Hey Jude by performing it on ITV show Frost On Sunday in September that year - with the programme's presenter David Frost introduced them as 'the greatest tearoom orchestra in the world'. In his reminiscences about being involved in the song's recording, and its royalties, Mr Bassano said: 'Over the years, that single easy and enjoyable session has earned me more money than anything else I have ever done.' Hey Jude remains a staple of the live sets performed by Sir Paul McCartney, now 83, including at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park in July 2005 and the London 2012 OIympics opening ceremony seven years later. Tributes shared following Mr Bassano's death in February this year included a quote from Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who said: 'Few musicians possess this type of intellectual curiosity and knowledge.' Mr Bassano's career involved performing in the orchestras for West End musicals while he also founded a brass quintet called Equale Brass, conducted at the Royal Albert Hall during the Proms and adjudicated for the BBC Young Musician of the Year.
