Ensembles warm hearts at amazing Autumn Concert
The snow may have been falling outside, but inside SGS our musicians were creating a warm, cozy evening as they surrounded the audience with fabulous sounds at the Autumn Concert.
Second Orchestra kicked off the spectacular with songs from warmer climes, ‘Yellow Bird’ arr. Richard Ling and ‘Capriccio Espagnol’ by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. They also performed another Ling arrangement, ‘Ragtime Roundup’.
The Dysfunktionals and S Club Diminished Seventh brought a bluesy feel to proceedings with ‘Black Coffee’ (Sonny Burke and Paul Francis Webster) and ‘Blue Skies’ (Irving Berlin).
Lead singers Anjali Abraham and Mia Krywonos had audiences captivated with their melodic voices, and the bands also delivered excellent versions of Sidney Bechet’s ‘Petite Fleur’ and Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘A Night in Tunisia’.
Before the interval, Big Band delighted with a trio of hits: ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ by The Sherman Brothers, ‘The Chicken’ by Pee Wee Ellis and the Jackson 5’s ‘I Want You Back’.
Wind Orchestra were up after the break with three songs of their own: ‘Flourish For Wind Orchestra’ by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the theme to ‘The Simpsons’ (Danny Elfman) and John Philip Sousa’s ‘The Liberty Bell’.
The pièce de résistance of the evening was a medley from ‘Les Misérables’ (arr. Ed Lojeski) performed by Chorus.
The medley featured soloists Harriet Thomson, Dan Wood, Ella Jones, James Caine, Annabel Huxley, Bella Rich, Sean Sembatya, Rosie Moore and May Nassar, and they were accompanied by Nathan Monk on the piano.
