UNE Colleges' Chamber Ensemble Concert

We attended a surprise concert last night. It was (a) free, (b) involved university students, (c) mixed mostly classical music and jazz, and (d) the items were surprisingly well performed. Unknown to me, Deidre Rickards AO, who Dot knows, bought together student musicians to form the Colleges' Chamber Ensembles. The AO incidentally stands for Order of Australia, which was awarded for her services to music. I didn't know much talent we have.

The performance lasted a little over an hour and started with a highland lament played on the bagpipes, Andrew Nash. Then a flute ensemble played the Dance of the Reed Pipes from Tchaikovsky's Nutcraker Suite and Jordan's 'The Little Red Monkey'. Apologies for the poor quality of the photos because the concert hall's lighting was dim and the performers were some distance away.

One of the flautists, Kate Steele, then performed a lively waltz by John Rutter (born in 1945 just after me and Dot). Then it was the turn of a string 'quartet' (actually five members), who performed Haydn's Divertimento in G and Matthew Ryan, a recorder player, who played Telemann's Sonata in D minor.

After the string 'quartet' played the first movement of Mozart's delightful string quintet in C, Neree Pepperall sang Puccini's 'O mio babbino caro' from 'Gianni Schicchi'. She had a powerful voice. The flute ensemble returned for Eugene Bozza's 'Jour d'ete a la Montagne (apologies for the absence of accents), ushering iin the Jazz Combo who performed works entitled Cantaloupe Island and Watermelon Man (by Herbie Hancock) and Song for my Father (Horace Silver). The Jazz Combo were obviously having a ball - especially the excellent pianist (Martyn Peters) and the drummer (Stephen Harris). Neither of these gentlemen could be called a student, but that circumstance hardly dented the enjoyment of the the Combo's music.

All in all, this was a fine event and we look forward to attending the next one.

AS