Concert history details here...
Beamish Museum 21st May, 2017
The Orpheus perform at about a dozen concerts a year and most of them take place in halls or churches, usually in the Lincolnshire area.
However, our Concert Secretary. Richard Wilson, is always on the look-out for more unusual venues , both locally and further afield.
In the past the choir has performed at Harewood House in Yorkshire and the Spa Pavilion in Scarborough and nearer to home they entertained the Lions Charity Group at the Vines Hotel in Skegness and received a warm and enthusiastic reception recently at the Immingham Golf Club.A couple of years ago he found out that choirs performed at the Beamish Museum in County Durham and started enquiries into what sort of venue was used there for that kind of event. All that hard work bore fruit this year when the Orpheus were invited to give two performances on Sunday, 21st May.
Beamish Museum is in an open area and comprises a1900's town and railway station, an Old Hall from the 1820's, a 1940's farm and a pit village based on life in the early part of the last century. A road and a tramway run round the whole place and vintage buses and trams take visitors to all the various points of interest.
A nearly full complement of the choir members together with wives and supporters set off on the Saturday morning for a week-end of socialising and singing. A two-hour stop was made at Thirsk where there were many thirsty race-goers mingling with the locals in the market place and then it was off to our hotel near Darlington where an excellent dinner was enjoyed by all.
The pit village included in its lay-out a chapel and it was here that the choir were due to give their two performances, one at 11.30 in the morning and the other at 3 in the afternoon. From the first notes of the first song it was clear that this was a venue with excellent acoustics and the choir really enjoyed going through their repertoire of Welsh hymn tunes and spirituals which had been especially chosen to fit with the building they were singing in. The audiences reacted very favourably to the songs and one member of the choir had his Sunday lunch interrupted by a lady who felt she just had to tell him how moved she had been by the singing!
After the afternoon performance there was just time to have a last look round Beamish before setting off for home at 5 o'clock. Everyone agreed that it had been a splendid week-end from both a musical and social point of view.
Ebonites 13th May 2017
This concert with the Ebonites, an ensemble of 10 professional clarinettists, proved an enormous success. The performance was to a packed audience who enjoyed the informal ‘Café Style’ layout to the concert venue, The Roy Kemp Suite at The Central Hall, Grimsby.
The Ebonites are an exciting ensemble, who are the only professional Clarinet choir in the U.K. The group consists of professional freelance clarinettists who play all over the country with various orchestras such as The Halle, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Mid Wales Chamber Orchestra, Opera North and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to name but a few. They perform widely around the country, and in 2015 were invited to play at the International Clarinetfest in Madrid and in 2016 at the Clarinet and Saxophone Society Clarinet and Saxophone Day at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Their repertoire includes many styles and genres of music to appeal to all tastes, as well as some new commissions from composers such as Paul Vowles, Andy Scott and Jeffery Wilson.
The Ebonites performed a number of light classical pieces from their unique repertoire, the most memorable being a bespoke arrangement, unique to them, of the old favourite ‘The Grand old Duke of York’ which proves there is always a different and pleasing new approach to an old song.
The Orpheus performed a varied programme of songs ranging from songs from the shows through light classical and popular songs to traditional male voice renditions of popular hymns. We started with ‘The Cole Porter Medley’ followed by Howard Goodall’s arrangement of ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’ and light opera with ‘Funiculi’.
The second group included one of our favourites, Verdi’s ‘Speed Your Journey’ from the Nabuca, and an audience favourite ‘Is This The Way to Amarillo’ in which they were able to participate with accompanying claps in appropriate places.
The concert finished with The Ebonites accompanying The Orpheus in joint items ‘The Mexican Fiesta’ and ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’.
Celebration Concert March 11th 2017
On March 11th, this year the Orpheus held a very special celebration concert.
The occasion was in honour of two men who, in different ways, have made a significant contribution to the history of our choir which was formed in 1949.
In 1966, the choir performed at the nearby town of Immingham and their guest artist was a teenage pianist named Richard Markham. It was his first public appearance in a career which has seen him become an internationally-renowned concert pianist and today he still plays to audiences all over the world.
He makes sure that he is not forgotten in his home town and has appeared with the Orpheus in many concerts over the years.
In that same year of 1966 a young man named Richard Bradley joined the choir and in due course became its Musical Director, a position which he still holds today. Some of you will know him from his chairmanship of the National Association of Choirs for several years.
It was felt the 50 years of musical connection with the choir by the two Richards should be commemorated in some way and this celebration was the outcome.
The concert was a great success and the audience were treated to a wonderful performance of classical pieces by Richard Markham. A few years ago, he had put together some arrangements of Lincolnshire folk songs which formed part of a concert in Grimsby performed by joint local choirs and two of these were taken up by the Orpheus and have appeared in their concert repertoire ever since. For this celebration we asked him to accompany us in the two songs, The Grimsby Fishermen and The Lincolnshire Poacher, and they received a great ovation when they were sung as the climax of the evening.
Bill Threapleton.
Chairman.