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.

January

We started the year a week late, as our first meeting should have been on New Year’s Day. However, we decided to live dangerously, and move this month’s dates a week back. Apologies to those we managed to confuse.

Our first meeting was on 8th January, and we had twelve members. Two new members have joined us recently, so we dug out some older, simpler pieces to start off the morning. We then played a set of easy Baroque Consorts, arranged by Helen Hooker. While each piece may not have been well known, the style was familiar, and we played them successfully. We returned to “Simple Gifts” by Joseph Brackett, which is a Shaker tune, which was used by Aaron Copland in his Appalachian Spring, and for the song “Lord of the Dance”. Our version was adapted by Sheila Richards. We then played an arrangement of the Sarabande from Grieg’s Holberg Suite. The Bassano family came to London in the time of Henry VIII (I think), and stayed to compose and play music at the Royal Court, and they also made recorders. They stayed on after the death of Henry, so they must have been careful. We played the first two movements of Augustine Bassano’s Royal Wind Music. We then brought ourselves more up-to-date with Bare Necessities, but went back in time to play some music written for Crumhorns. The range of recorders must be similar to that of crumhorns, although the crumhorns don’t go as high as descant recorders can.

Our second meeting on 22nd January was also well attended, with 15 in the group, including another potential new member. Our play list was very similar to that of the previous meeting, with an additional crumhorn piece, and The Hippopotamus replacing the Bare Necessities. We also played a few pieces from our reserve anthology, including the Cherry Tree Rag, Purcell’s Rondeau, el Choclo (a tango), and we managed to squeeze in “Basin Street Blues” before the end.

We discussed the possibility of our going to the u3a Festival in York in July. We have been invited to play, so we now need decide how many of us will go, so that we can choose our programme.

If anyone knows of (or is) a conductor without a band, please get in touch. As our numbers increase, there is more scope for us to go astray. None of us wants to stop playing, as we rather enjoy it.