The Recorder Group

Leader:  Joan Gibson - recorder@ashbyu3a.co.uk -

The recorder group, meet twice a month, to make music in a relaxed, fun way. I would hope that we would be able to cater for a wide range of experience and skill. We usually meet each month on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays at 10am, but occasionally it varies. Check here for up to date information.

March

On 5th March, we stuck with much of the music we played during February, as we are starting to prepare for the u3a Festival in July. As only 6 of us are planning to attend, and play our recorders on the Thursday afternoon, we need to include our repertoire for the festival in the fortnightly meetings with the whole group included. Also, we have been invited to play at a concert on 9th May at the Chapel in Linton Heath, with the Boundary Singers. Obviously, we will need extra practices, when we have chosen our play list.

We played Andrew Challinger’s “Variations on Greensleeves”, which we enjoy, and isn’t too hard. We played another couple of fairly new (to us) trios, which might fit well around 6 players. The music is actually not very new, being canzonettas by Monteverdi, and Early Tudor trios. After playing one of our favourites, Fauré’s “Cantique de Jean Racine”, we had another go at Marg Hall’s “Three Cats”, which is trickier. That needs “a bit of work”.

The crumhorn music is going quite well: it has the advantage of not being too high in pitch, but is not very well known. But we need to practise the Handel Allegro. By this time, we were nearing noon, so we played Purcell’s Rondeau from the John Pitts quartet book, before finishing.

On 19th March, there were 12 of us. We played some of the Recorder Poppettes, which we first played several years ago: they are good arrangements of well-known tunes, arranged for 3 recorder parts, so they should be suitable for both our engagements. Some of the other music was well liked, but needs more work, and would therefore not be suitable for the performances. The Handel Concerto Grosso and “Vox in Rama” by Clemens non Papa fall into this group. We will continue to play them: some of our members are unable to get to either performance, and we need to challenge ourselves a bit. The Recorder Quartets Book by John Pitts contains a useful selection of fairly well-known pieces, most of which we can play. We finished the session with a selection of these.

We had a new lady at the meeting on 19th. I've known her for ages, and she decided to join us to see what we get up to. She seemed to enjoy herself, so we may see her again.

The group is growing! Trouble is, it gets more difficult to keep us all together when we play! Victims of our success!