Programme:  December 2011 Concert, archived

Humouresque 

Lower Hutt.  St James Church, Woburn Road
    Saturday 3rd December at 7:30pm

HVO Conductor:   Brent Stewart

Dual/duel conductor: Stuart  Douglas

Soloists: Ruth Armishaw, Stewart Mann, Lydia Laine-Smith, Sharon Yearsley.

Programme

This is a light hearted concert, even if US purists argue that Anderson's "The Typewriter" is a serious comment on background noise seeping into a 1953 managerial office. Of course, typewriters only have the one font, and it is not Comic Sans. Percussionist John Toon will play it seriously. (That is, sans comic.)  Purists can debate with him afterwards the optimum paper weight for a hall the size of St James. *

The evening will finish with Claire Cowan's "Recipe for Disaster". It uses two conductors, who not only radiate two maestro egos, they also compete for orchestral and musical genre domination.

In between are the following. They are a classical in form, but lack Wagnerian Sturm und Drang.

• eConductor - updating conducting with couch potato technology.
• Introduction
• "Art is Calling For Me" from The Enchantress, by Victor Herbert
• "I'm Calm" (Stephen Sondheim, arr. Brent Stewart)
• Pachelbel Canon embellished with "Can you Feel the Love tonight" & "Let it Be" & "Walzing Matilda"
• Georgeous. From Passionella by Jerry Bock.
• Duetto buffo di due gatti.  In Memory of Rossini
• Ave Maria alla recorda  Schubert ( illustrating the difficulty of adding recorders to strings)
• The Typewriter. Leroy Anderson. Percussionist in full fig: John Toon
• "Nothing" (from 'A Chorus Line', Marvin Hamlisch, arr. Brent Stewart)
• "Sing!"   (also from 'A Chorus Line')
• "I'm All Alone" from Spamalot
• Ill Wind. The Flanders and Swann "I've Lost my Horn" lyrics to Mozart. Soloist Stuart Mann.
• "The Song That Goes Like This"  Eric Idle / John du Prez
• "Whatever happened to My Part".  Diva in Distress from Spamalot.

And maybe a few other bits as well. Why treat the programme seriously.

Prices

Adults : $15.00
Seniors : $12.00
School students : $8.00
       Door sales.

Tea, coffee and biscuits afterwards. (Paid for as part of the admission.)

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* Ideally, the paper is made from the Stradivarius recipe, namely a triple layer of finely pulped spruce, maple and willow bound together by vernice bianca, a varnish composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. Unfortunately, Office Supplies were out of it. Said there wasn't a lot of call for it. Couldn't we just iron three party hats and glue them together with hair spray....  
   Really! The typewriter is a Concert Grand. There are standards to maintain.

** Yes. We could have spelt Humouresque without a 'u'. On the grounds that that is how they spell it in New York, which spelling the Cambridge Dictionary does not recognise. (They counter suggest burlesque and grotesque.)  So we compromised.

*** This footnote has been deliberately left blank.