Thursday 14 November 2013

Elgar Room - Masterpieces

A wonderful evening at the Royal Albert Hall...
..whilst hordes of schoolchildren were enjoying day three of the Music & Youth concerts in the RAH, we gave our Masterpieces in the Elgar Room - a splendid room for cabaret there.

Having had a great evening there last Christmas, it was a delight to repeat the excellent experience ...

There are photos of famous artists all round the room, so we had the idea (well, Richard did!) of giving an entertainment where all the people pictured are heard.... I won't go into it in nit-picking detail, but all these people were name-checked and at least one piece of theirs heard...

Edward Elgar
Nina Simone
Yehudi Menuhin
Jacqueline Du Pré
Frank Zappa
Ray Charles
Johnny Cash
Jimmy Hendrix
Pavarotti
James Brown
Ella Fitzgerald
Frank Sinatra
George Harrison & John Lennon
Duke Ellington
Marvin Gaye
& also
Elton John (his picture is not there, but his red grand piano is on permanent loan to the room!)

To complete this task 37 pieces were required - some of these were in medleys, otherwise we'd have been there all night!
Lots of new things for us, and amongst the splendour was a recreation of the duet of It's a Man's Man's Man's World  as sung by two of our photos - James Brown and Pavarotti! We also found another way of hijacking the audience (well, a couple in it) using Frank Zappa!
Also a chance to do some things in the UK that have previously been only seen on mainland Europe, such as our Beatles medley on a train & our Pomp and Circumstance/Best of British parody... (both as imagined by Julian and Maggie Forsyth).

We were joined on the piano by our old friend Paul Plummer... excellent to work with him again.

Huge fun!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A great concert! Our first taste of live Cantabile since having our first child (18 years ago) and it was not a disappointment: a wonderfully put together program full of invention and delight, with many laughs.
Many thanks!

Nick and Clare, Carshalton