December Meeting 2011

The December meeting was well attended and we all worked very hard for a total of two hours on our ensemble pieces. Rob Sellery spent the first hour on “Leonard Von Call’s Minuet and Trio” and, by the coffee break, we had made considerable progress with not only the notes, but also the performance directions which Rob gave us.

After the coffee break, courtesy of Trevor and his home made biscuits, the following members played their chosen pieces:-

Freddy Carvalho            Amazing Grace & Silent Night.

Danny Kim                   A Blue Article.

Trevor Pike                   Away In a Manger.

Alan Green                   Salida Del Sol by Dieter Kreidler.

Larisa & Vince               Greensleeves.

John Mann then spent an hour helping us to unravel the rhythmical intricacies of “Andrew Forrest’s Joropo”. Make no mistake about it, this piece is clearly going to give us all a run for our money, so please practise your part at home and don’t rely on your sight-reading skills alone. John really had his work cut out as this is a tricky tune. Perhaps even the most experienced of us need to anticipate cadential sequences and to generally have a sense of cadence, combined with dynamic contrast. John also gave us guidance on the performance directions.

Because of the amount of work which, of necessity, we put into the ensemble pieces, we did not have time to play some Festive music brought along by John Mann and Freddy Carvalho. My apologies for these omissions but we simply ran out of time.

However, in my opinion it was a very good and productive meeting. I pointed out the obvious necessity for us to attend every future meeting, in order to attain a good standard in what is only a comparatively short time remaining.”

Den.