The Music Appreciation Group

Leader:  Mike Stow - musicapp@ashbyu3a.co.uk - 01530 469152

4th February

This month we were at Nev’s house, eight of us, almost up to full strength and with our usual eclectic mix of songs and tunes. We seemed to alternate between pop and classical all morning!

Mike started the session with a combination of rock and classical with ace guitarist Jeff Beck playing Nessun Dorma and really making that guitar sing! An amazing virtuoso piece. With a swift change of pace we went to the lovely Handel’s Nightingale Chorus. Next was a very young Frank Sinatra and ‘S’wonderful’ and back to classical for the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Andrew Davis playing Vaughn Williams ‘Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis’. Very relaxing.

Then it was Leonard Cohen with his iconic ‘Tower of Song’ and back again to classical for Beethoven’s Piano Sonata #8 (Pathetique) played by Daniel Barenboim. An artist new to most of us was trumpeter Mike Copozzi who duets with his alter ego on video this time playing ‘You’ve got a friend in me’. Very good playing and funny with it.

Next was Menahem Pressler beautiful rendition of Debussy’s ‘Claire de Lune’. Exquisite piano playing.

Very different was the equally talented, in a different way, Bill Bailey with his hilarious tribute to German electro-synth band Kraftwerk playing the ‘Hokey Cokey’. More classical, this time Rimsky Korsakov’s Sheherazade played wonderfully by a Slovenian Youth Orchestra.

Then it was the Modern Gustin Trio’s jazz interpretation of the Beatles ‘Obladi oblada’ followed by the Stellenbosch University Choir singing ‘Baba Yetu’ which is a Swahili translation of the Lord’s Prayer set to a tune by Christopher Tin, a Chinese-American. Lovely.

We then returned to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower of Song’ sung this time by Sir Tom Jones. Very different to M Cohen but brilliant. His voice just gets better and better.

A couple more classical tunes, firstly the well known waltz from ‘Masquerade’ by Khachaturian followed by Russell Watson singing ‘Caruso’ a song in honour of the great Italian singer.

We closed the session with David Crosby, Jimmy Webb and Carly Simon at a tribute concert to Brian Wilson singing his lovely ‘In my room’