Monday, June 29, 2009


PROMS IN THE PARK

Caprice at Hylands

28.06.09


Caprice have yet to play Glastonbury, but our own Essex Wind Orchestra came one step closer last Sunday with a charity concert at Hylands, the last of the British Armed Forces and Veterans Weekend events.

Only four trombones, but 76 more musicians on an impressive sound stage on the back lawn, with sensitively amplified sound – the Count Basie tribute came over particularly well.

Appropriately, much of the music had a forces theme.













The concert opened with the impertinent Colonel Bogey, and included Major Glenn Miller's greatest hits, a Home Front selection – White Cliffs, I'll Be Seeing You, Thanks for the Memory, And The Band Played On – as well as the RAF March Past, with one tiny aircraft passing overhead on its way home.

The Dam Busters March would have had a special resonance for one man in the crowd of picnicking Prommers – as a boy he saw the whole operation from his home in the hills above the Ruhr.

Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory made a fittingly jingoistic finale.

As compère Jon Vaughan said, this was music to conjure up memories and stir the senses, with David Bome and the splendid Caprice musicians giving of their best on a beautiful midsummer night – Chelmsford's own Proms in the Park.

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