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ENSEMBLE INFO

Ensemble Contact:

Email:

alison.kinder1@btinternet.com

2013

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A Musical Menagerie – Chelys in collaboration with Fair Oriana (Penelope Appleyard and Angela Hicks. Lucy Cox for Lichfield). This is a new concert programme which features pieces all about animals. We gave the first performance in January for Sevenoaks Music Society and are now planning 8 other performances for which we will need financial assistance. The programme is a very engaging, accessible and fun one, which takes the audience on a trip round the various enclosures of the menagerie, including the insect hotel, aviary, reptile house and aquarium. It includes very humourous and lighthearted elements with a ballad about a frog and mouse who get married, and a sparrow by the name of Philip, and also has beautiful and poignant moments with consort songs by Dowland and Byrd, and a couple of lovely sacred pieces by Dering and Giovanelli which feature a serpent and a dragon. It also has instrumental pieces on an animal theme including Isaac’s ‘Der Hund’, our own arrangement of the Playford dance ‘Pegasus’, and a slightly ridiculous rendition of The Elephant from Saint Saens ‘Carnival of the Animals’!
Future performances are planned for Bristol Early Music Festival (May 9th), Leamington Music (Oct 13th) and Frome Concert Series (November 28th) - these are secured but would benefit from a small amount of additional funding to fully cover all costs. We then have agreements in principle with the Lichfield Festival’s chamber music series (Oct 3rd), the Newcastle Lit & Phil (July 17th), Kings Lynn (Oct 25th), Goldenstone Chamber Music, Crewkerne (Nov 27th) and Early Music in the Marches (date tbc) all of which are funding dependent.
One of the big attractions of this programme is its universal appeal. It has plenty of really good music to satisfy the keenest early music audience member, but it is also very accessible to those who wouldn’t usually choose an early music concert and may never have heard a viol consort. One member of the audience in Sevenoaks sent this feedback which was kindly passed on to us: "Normally I would not put ancient music at the top of my list …. I would have been totally wrong. It was an absolute delight of brilliant musicians and chemistry of the two groups”. So we really do think this programme has something for everyone! Some of our concerts are in places that are used to hosting early music, and we hope that the programme will appeal to the regular attendees there, but we also hope it will help encourage new audience members to come along. Goldenstone is a fairly new series which Penelope is helping to run, so it’s exciting to be part of that.

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