All Kinds of Music

‘All Kinds of Music’ – a title that is taken from a line in Walton’s epic ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’. There was to be a series of concerts to celebrate the opening of a new concert hall at Bromsgrove School and it was suggested that a final item should embrace as many of the school musicians as possible – from the youngest to the oldest. To me, that sounded like the need for something bespoke, and my August 2017 composing project was born.

The piece attempts to be an all-inclusive package tour of music that might be made in this new music department and concert hall in years to come. The itinerary is as follows:

Section 1: A military style fanfare is sounded from the north and the orchestral brass take this up on stage. Download page 1 of the score here.

Section 2: The strings introduce a Russian Waltz which gets disrupted by the jazz band before they join forces in an unlikely fusion

Section 3: The youngest pupils enter with a vocal interlude, accompanied by the woodwinds:

‘Music makes us happy, Music makes us glad, When you are unhappy or feeling rather sad,

Sing a song, and then you’ll find the clouds give way and soon the sun will brighten up your day. So sing!

Section 4: The percussion section introduce a Brazilian-inspired dance section for full orchestra

Section 5: A choral culmination which combines oratorio, motet and music theatre leading into a short coda for ‘All Kinds of Musician’ (Download the final page of the score here.)

Let these walls rebound with melodies of beautiful contour and exquisite sequence.

Let this space be filled with harmonies of colourful richness and perfected cadence.

Let the room reverberate, exuberate, with entertaining rhythms of scintillating syncopation!