Review of Community School of Auchterarder at Perth Festival of the Arts

May 31 2011 Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

ON Thursday the Junior Brass Band of the Community School of Auchterarder opened the series of midday concerts given by local pupils as a feature of the Festival of the Arts.

This gave the audience the first opportunity to appreciate the impressive refurbishment of St John’s Kirk.

The youngsters played with confidence and competence, smoothly resounding in A Groovy Kind of Love and bold and punchy in Tropical Heatwave.

The popularity of learning brass instruments at the school was underlined in the performance by the Senior Brass Band.

They had fun in a robust playing of Hoots, a jazzy version of a Hundred Pipers.

They also did full justice to one of the greatest film scores, Elmer Bernstein’s theme for The Magnificent Seven.

The strings were represented by the String Orchestra.

They swung along happily, if a little tentatively, in Top of the World. Short and sweet. There is something very poignant about the young and innocent singing about love. The patently earnestness of the mainly girls’ choir in Make You Feel My Love and Angel was touching.

Soloists contributed splendidly to the programme. In If I Were a Rich Man trombonist Finlay Nelson captured the sombre mood with its stuttering start and its pensive legato. Any downtown smoky nightclub in New Orleans could do well to engage the talented pianist Rachel Pirie, her credentials proved in her moody playing of Jackson Street Blues. In contrast to this was the gentle theme tune for Miss Marple in an effective reduction, the choice of French horn player Shannon Majeau. She played beautifully.

Matthew Gordon demonstrated complete command of his instrument and confidence in his tenor saxophone solo. Boldness, strength of tone, liquid fluency, lively trilling marked his performance.

Rare is the appearance of a soloist male singer in these concerts, exceptionally rare is a singer such as Ellis Hill. In Scarlatti’s Giail sole dal Gange his technique was impressive, unhurried, controlled breathing, clear diction clear, but there was more, that hard to define quality which marks the performance as pure music. Top of the bill.

The concert came to an end with the Windband’s assured playing of music from the popular film Slumdog Millionaire.

This, like the rest of the programme, was a work readily accessible to the audience, a very suitable and fitting start to the series.

Sigurd Scott