Puffins on Portland and musical miners
Puffins on Portland and musical miners
PORTLAND on a wet, foggy night in March might not have been the obvious location for a county-wide musical celebration and a rapturous response, but that's what the audience at the church of St James at Reforne enjoyed last Friday night.
It was the finale of a partnership between Artsreach and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in which Dorset-based composer Sammy Hurden joined a poet, a sculptor and members of the BSO to explore the Jurassic Coast. Many of the results were seen and heard last summer, in time for the Olympic sailing events' arrival in Weymouth.
But last Friday's concert was the culmination of the project, bringing together the orchestra's Resonate Strings (a member of each of the string sections) with the Freedance Choir, members of Island Voices, the Crossways Handbell Ringers and other musicians to perform the "Jurassic" work Water and Stone and a selection of other music, climaxing in a second performance of Hurden's recently-composed piece The Hare and the Harp.
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An audience of 215 joined 10 musicians and 50 singers on the dank night for a magical and spectacular climax to a hugely successful collaborative project. Its effects will be long lasting – the sort of "legacy" that the Olympics sought – as the Churches Conservation Trust (which administers St George's) hopes to make much greater use of the beautiful Georgian building in the future, and the choirs set up by Sammy during the project will continue singing together.
At Portland last Friday the audience delighted in the Resonate Strings performing Bach, Prokofiev, Holst, Vivaldi,Walton and Karl Jenkins, and fighting the cold damp elements to keep their instruments in tune.
Apart from Stephen McNeff's A Dorset Round, composed for a primary school choir as part of the project, the rest of the music came from Sammy Hurden, evoking the spirit of the region from the "Kenneth Williams-like" puffins to the miners at Beer, from mermaids to songs of the French sailors and jazz on the beach.
It was a wonderful night, and congratulations to everyone involved, especially to Sammy Hurden, who as always deflected the glory onto her singers and musicians. GP-W
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