Featuring children from Bolton primary schools
Supported by Friends of BSO and Bolton Operatic Society Trust
The Victoria Hall
Saturday 11th March 2023 3:00pm
Conductor Ben Crick Leader Anita Levy
Narrator Beth Singh
Soloist Andy Wyatt
I am delighted to welcome you to this, our first afternoon concert, which we hope will be more accessible to younger persons than our traditional evening events.
We are very pleased to be joined on stage today by young musicians from Harwood Meadows Primary School, Heathfield Primary School, Lostock Primary School, St Mary’s RC Primary School and St Saviour C of E Primary School.
This concert promises to be an event that all the family can enjoy together, comprising a varied programme that will transport us to a rodeo and through a forest full of noisy animals. We’ll be helped along our way by narrator Beth Singh and soloist Andy Wyatt who will be showcasing an instrument not often featured in front of an orchestra.
To those of you for whom this is the first BSO concert you have attended, please do check out our website for details of our future concerts, as we would love to see you again!
Finally, I am particularly grateful to the Friends of BSO and Bolton Operatic Society Trust for the financial support they have provided towards this concert. Without such support, the Orchestra would not be able to bring such a variety of music-making to Bolton.
Now… Are you sitting comfortably?
Then we’ll begin!
Once upon a time…
Nikki Lord Orchestra ManagerAaron Copland Buckaroo Holiday
Sergei Prokofiev
Interval
Peter and the Wolf
Narrator Beth Singh
George Kleinsinger Tubby the Tuba
Soloist Andy Wyatt
Lin Marsh Once Upon A Time
Aaron Copland Hoe-Down
Future BSO concerts at The Victoria Hall
Saturday 13th May at 7:30pm Carmen
Saturday 1st July at 7:30pm The Road Home
Saturday 23rd September at 7:30pm A Distant Home
Saturday 25th November at 7:30pm England Four Ways
www.boltonsymphony.org.uk
Ben is a Yorkshire born and based orchestral conductor and composer with 20 years’ experience working in the music industry. He loves collaboration with other art forms, be it ballet, films or computer games, and is inspired by a firm belief that music can tell stories as eloquently as any art that humankind has created. He has held a BBC Music Fellowship and worked with orchestras throughout the UK and Europe, conducting such performers as Lesley Garrett, Tasmin Little, Jennifer Pike, Sir Willard White, Peter Donahoe, Raphael Wallfisch, Aled Jones and Dame Emma Kirkby. He believes in getting as many people to engage with music so, as Artistic Director of Skipton Building Society Camerata, he has given performances in pubs, shopping centres and train stations, as well as more traditional venues. Recent conducting projects have included conducting a side-by-side scheme between the Orchestra of Opera North and Leeds Conservatoire, performances with Grimethorpe Collery Band, an appointment as the Artistic Director of the newly reformed Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra and composing and performing an orchestral score to accompany a grime theatre piece A Tale of Two Estates. His compositions and arrangements have been performed at major concert venues and festivals throughout the UK. He has written music for adverts, animation and film, including recently the music for Belgium’s Red Nose Day adverts and a perfume advert for the Versace company. He has recently collaborated with the poet Ian McMillan and has written an oratorio based around traditional Yorkshire carols, which has numerous performances planned for Christmas 2023 and a recording to be released in December.
Believing passionately in music education for all, Ben is consultant conductor of York Youth Orchestra and a trustee of The Friends of Bradford Music Services, a charity committed to extending accessibility of local music lessons. He is conducting tutor at the University of Huddersfield, staff conductor at the Leeds Conservatoire, has written for BBC Music Magazine, Opera Now and Early Music Today, translated 3 operas and has been a guest contributor for BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4.
Outside of music he’s into climbing, caving, fell running, rugby league and being a dad who ropes his son into the aforementioned activities.
Growing up in Liverpool, Anita Levy enjoyed a busy schedule of orchestral and chamber playing that eventually culminated in a period as Leader of Merseyside Youth Orchestra before going on to study under Benedict Holland at the Royal Northern College of Music. Following her time at the RNCM. Anita continued her tutelage under the watchful eye of Peter Maslin, Co-Leader of Opera North. Since graduating in 1999, Anita has pursued an extensive career as both a freelance and contract orchestral violinist performing regularly with orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Northern Ballet Theatre Orchestra, the Halle, and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to her extensive orchestral experience, Anita performs regularly with a number of chamber music ensembles and combines her performance schedule with a busy private teaching practice.
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Beth Singh has been singing and performing from an early age in musicals, plays, concerts and revues. Her current work includes performing as a tribute artist in the UK and abroad as Cilla Black (as seen in Edgar Wright’s ‘Last Night in Soho’), Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. When she’s not singing on stage, Beth works as the singing teacher and Musical Director for the North West Theatre Arts Company. She loves helping children and young people develop their confidence on stage, and is looking forward to teaming up with the Orchestra today. For more information on the shows Beth has to offer, please see her website at www.bethsingh.co.uk.
Instagram/Facebook @bethsinghvocalist
A founder member of BSO, Andy Wyatt has been playing the tuba for around 44 years. He was a student at Bury Church High School where he was taught to play the tuba by Lawrence Yates, before being accepted into Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester where he was tutored by the late, great Stuart Roebuck of the Halle Orchestra. Andy has performed all around Europe including sell out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall amongst many others, played for many bands including Fodens Motor Works with whom he won the European Championships, Brighouse & Rastrick Band, Besses o’ th’ Barn Band and Bolton’s own Wingates Band. Throughout his career, he has been on stage with some of the greats like Roy Castle, James Watson, The Childs Brothers, Johnny Morris and Sir Patrick Moore!
This is the third time that Andy has appeared as a soloist with the Orchestra. We hope there will be many more!
Children from five Bolton schools are taking part in the concert:
Harwood Meadows Primary School
Heathfield Primary School
Lostock Primary School
St Mary’s RC Primary School
St Saviour C of E Primary School
The choirs are directed by Carolyn Baxendale MBE who is Head of Bolton Music Service and leads the Greater Manchester Music Hub.
Bolton Music Service (BMS) works in Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen with all sectors of the local community to increase access to quality music making, to raise standards of music education across all schools and academies and to provide exciting musical pathways for children through tuition and music ensembles.
BMS teaches around 8,000 children weekly to play a musical instrument, teaching the music curriculum in over a third of our local primary schools and running 45 weekly out-of-school bands, choirs and orchestras, including the recently launched T-Rock for budding rock musicians. Many students progress through the Music Service and then go on to play in Bolton Symphony Orchestra, regional ensembles like the Halle Youth Orchestra and the Greater Manchester Youth Brass Band and in national groups like the National Youth Choir/Brass Band/Orchestra - and many pursue a career in music.
Mere Hall
Merehall Street
Bolton BL1 2QT 01204 333533
music.service@bolton.gov.uk
www.boltonmusicservice.com www.gmmusichub.co.uk
Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)
Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as “populist” and which the composer labelled his “vernacular” style. Works in this vein include the ballet Rodeo, from which we perform two movements to open and close this afternoon’s concert.
Buckaroo Holiday (our first piece) opens with a grand fanfare before the woodwinds introduce the cowgirl’s theme. This quiet theme continues until the Rodeo theme begins presenting a highly rhythmic motif that evokes the trotting of horses. The lone cowgirl seeks the affections of the Head Wrangler, who is rather taken with the more feminine rancher’s daughter. The cowboys enter to the railroad tune of Sis Joe, envisioned by de Mille (the ballet’s original choreographer) as an event “like thunder”, which Copland obliges with heavy drums and brass. As the cowgirl seeks the attention of her quarry, she mimics the surrounding cowboys, reflected in the heavy use of the tune If He'd Be a Buckaroo in this section. The theme is repeated by various solo instruments before being realised in triple canon by the full orchestra. After a brief return to the quiet cowgirl theme, the fanfare returns. Sis Joe reappears again, before the entire orchestra triumphantly plays If He'd be a Buckaroo.
Hoe-Down (our final piece) opens by vamping the first bar of William Hamilton Stepp’s interpretation of the folk tune Bonaparte's Retreat, which will become a major theme of the section. After a reprisal of the Rodeo theme, the theme proper begins in the strings, as the horns play a simple counterpoint. Instead of building to a climax, this section segues into Miss McLeod's Reel, performed by various solo instruments. Copland briefly introduces the Irish theme Gilderoy in the clarinet and oboe.
Building toward the end, Copland reintroduces Bonaparte's Retreat in canon, before returning to the Rodeo theme, which slows into the climactic kiss between the cowgirl and the roper. Bonaparte's Retreat is then resumed by the full orchestra, which ends the piece with a grand fanfare.
Peter and the Wolf is a “symphonic fairy tale for children” written by Prokofiev in 1936. The narrator tells a children’s story, while the orchestra illustrates it by using different instruments to play a ‘theme’ that represents each character in the story. It is Prokofiev’s most frequently performed work and one of the most often performed works in the entire classical repertoire.
The story goes… Peter lives at his grandfather’s home in a forest clearing. One day, Peter goes out into the clearing, leaving the garden gate open, and a duck that lives in the yard takes the opportunity to go swimming in a pond nearby. The duck and a bird argue on whether a proper bird should be able to swim or fly. A local cat stalks them quietly, and the bird - warned by Peter - flies to safety in a tall tree while the duck swims to safety in the middle of the pond.
Before long, Peter’s grandfather scolds him for being outside and playing in the meadow alone because a wolf might come out of the forest and attack him. When Peter shows defiance, believing he has nothing to fear from wolves, his grandfather takes him back into the house and locks the gate. Soon afterwards, a ferocious grey wolf does indeed come out of the forest. The cat quickly climbs into the tree with the bird, but the duck, who has jumped out of the pond, is chased, overtaken, and swallowed by the beast.
Seeing all of this from inside, Peter fetches a rope and climbs over the garden wall into the tree. He asks the bird to fly around the beast's head to distract him, while he lowers a noose and catches the wolf by his tail. The beast struggles to get free, but Peter ties the rope to the tree and the noose only gets tighter.
Some hunters, who have been tracking the wolf, come out of the forest with their guns readied but, instead, Peter gets them to help him take it to a zoo in a victory parade that includes himself, the bird, the hunters leading the wolf, the cat, and lastly his grumbling Grandfather, still disappointed that Peter ignored his warnings, but proud that his grandson caught the beast.
The Orchestra is delighted to have Beth Singh narrating the story this afternoon.
George Kleinsinger (1914 - 1982)
Kleinsinger was an American composer and conductor from San Bernardino, California. He lived for much of his life in Manhattan’s famous Chelsea Hotel, with a forest of plants, flying birds, exotic fish (including piranha), a tarantula and even a giant snake! He composed extensively for Broadway stage shows and for television. One day, a tuba player came up to him and said “Mr Kleinsinger, nobody’s ever written a concerto for a tuba.” Kleisinger was touched by the idea and so he wrote Tubby the Tuba with his friend and lyricist Paul Tripp. The work quickly became one of the most well-known children’s symphonic works after Peter and the Wolf.
We are delighted to have founder member of the BSO brass section, Andy Wyatt, with us this afternoon as tuba soloist.
Lin Marsh (b1950)
1. I remember just being small
2. Sing us a story
3. The Flames of Life
4. Monsters!
5. Maybe
6. The World of my Tomorrow
Lin Marsh is a prolific British composer who has written for BBC children’s programmes for both television and radio. She works on many commissions for young people, composing both choral repertoire and music theatre pieces. Specifically composed for children’s choir and orchestra in 2013, Once Upon A Time is a collection of songs that showcase all that is good about young voices collaborating with more experienced musicians.
The Orchestra is very grateful to the Friends of Bolton Symphony Orchestra. The Friends offer practical and financial support, and, in return, they receive a range of benefits including priority booking and access to rehearsals and social events.
The Friends have provided financial support to the orchestra in many ways, including sponsoring soloists, contributing towards the CD recording and supporting the purchase of our timpani. The Friends are pleased and proud to support such a fine orchestra and contribute to its continuing success.
Members of BSO have developed close ties with the Friends, and we welcome them to come along and see how the Orchestra works. We regularly put on private concerts for them, and these are always convivial events greatly enjoyed by both Friends and performers alike.
The annual Friends subscription is just £15, and they very much welcome new members. So if you are looking for a new social group and would like to give the Orchestra further support, then please make contact at the Friends table tonight, email Christine Deacon (friends@boltonsymphony.org.uk) or use the contact form on our website.
We are grateful to Booths Music and Bolton FM for helping to publicise our concerts, and to Fitchett’s Photography in collaboration with PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide for providing us with lovely photographs that remain © Fitchett’s Photography
