Music making in the West Midlands

Members from across the Midlands joined together for a day of musical merriment, in the company of guest conductor Michael Graham.

Val, Recorder Subject Adviser and member of Sutton Coldfield u3a Recorder group, recounts the day.

Michael, who is based in Edinburgh, was making his first visit to any u3a group in the UK and he came to our u3a at Sutton Coldfield. The evening before the event, the Sutton Coldfield u3a reception committee learned about Michael's many different roles as a conductor, arranger, composer and recorder ensemble leader. His approach to leading our recorder playing day was to make it accessible, from the least experienced player to challenging the more advanced recorder player. He showed us how to warm up physically before playing and encouraged us to use this across all our practices, to help prolong our playing days.

We then sat down and started to play music from across the musical eras, from Medieval to contemporary Jazz pieces. The sound of 30 recorders playing together was wonderful as we worked through the Pavans and Galliard from the earliest printed book – Mulliner Book. We played through each piece and then were directed, with Michael’s guidance, to develop our use of articulation, breathing and performance of this type of piece. By lunchtime, we had worked on music composed by Marg Hall and Michael respectively. Marg Hall’s Caprice was lively and required us to use our sight-reading skills to their fullest and we definitely were having to focus on dynamic contrasts and listening skills. Michael’s piece The Divertimento was good fun to play and everyone was having a very interesting and informative day.

In the afternoon Michael reset the room so that we could experience playing music for 2 Recorder Choirs. This type of music went back to Venice in the 15th/ 16th Centuries. We moved round to play in our new positions and started work on Canzon - La Bevilacqua by Floriano Canale , arranged by Michael Graham himself. The sound was amazing and musically it was extremely satisfying to play such a complicated piece. Michael followed this up with a piece by Steve and Ann Marshall called Double Vision which was also for 2 choirs but composed more recently.

We completed our afternoon with the best afternoon tea and cakes, provided by the members of the Sutton Coldfield u3a. Finally, to finish, Michael directed us back into our normal playing positions to play Swing Easy, a jazz suite by Marg Hall. This piece came in 5 sections and was really fun to play. All of us were “swinging” musically by the end of the afternoon.

I thank Jenny for organising the event, Heather for looking after the finances and the entire Sutton Coldfield u3a recorder ensemble for making it an event to remember. I do promise next time to see if we can have all the u3as in the Midlands region together for a huge recorder play day!

It was lovely to see our fellow u3a players and group leaders from Lichfield, Uttoxeter, Bromsgrove and Ashby de la Zouch.