Tag: St John’s Smith Square

Fading: The Hour Is At Hand, The Gesualdo Six, St John’s Smith Square, 28 March 2018

I’d heard a lot about The Gesualdo Six – they are currently the hottest boy band of the early music vocal consort world – so I have been keen to see them for some time.

This early evening concert at St John’s Smith Square slot didn’t suit Janie on a Wednesday, so I made one of those unusual but no longer rare concert bookings just for me.

What a super short concert it was.

SJSS had been turned around for this concert, so the audience faces the organ, not the massive, tired-looking stage – something I know they’d been talking/thinking about, but until now I had not yet experienced it. Janie and I have thought for some time that this configuration would work better for soloists and small ensembles.

It does work better.

I got in early to bagsy a good seat and took a picture. You can see my coat draped across a front row seat.

SJSS Turned Around

Nice touch with the candles.

The hall soon filled up – several hundred people I would estimate – the largest audience I have seen at SJSS for a while. The idea of doing an early evening concert of this kind ahead of the main event certainly worked for this evening – perhaps also linked to the fact that this concert was part of the Holy Week Festival.

Here is a link to the SJSS web page for the concert that night – click here.

I’ve scraped that page to here, just in case the above link stops working.

The people sitting to the left of me clearly knew one of the singers, Guy James, who chatted with them briefly before the gig. The younger woman in that party asked him to throw in a pop song or two – but he shyly demurred, saying that he’d love to but it would probably get him into trouble with the others. Not very rock’n’roll.

I did and do have an arithmetical problem with this group. When I looked at the picture on their website – click here –and/ or the above SJSS web page and/or indeed the programme for the evening, I kept counting seven people in The Gesualdo Six.

I had a similar problem with the Jackson Five the previous week at The Ladbroke Arms, as reported in my piece – click here or below:

Dinner And Music Biz Chat With Simon Jacobs, Ladbroke Arms, 20 March 2018

A knowledgeable-sounding fellow sat next to me about five minutes before the start of the Gesualdo Six concert – he said that he had seen some of the performers before (e.g. Joseph Wicks recently) but never the entire ensemble together and was very excited to be getting to see them.

I mentioned my cardinal number problem – i.e. the matter of seven people comprising The Gesualdo Six, hoping for some insight from this knowledgeable fellow.

“I know, yes…tough isn’t it,” was that gentleman’s unhelpful reply.

But from now it’s all good news.

There were only six people in The Gesualdo Six on the night – which put me at my ease again.

The music was absolutely lovely.

Indeed, the opening number, Tallis’s Te Lucis Ante Terminum, was worth the price of admission alone (as sports commentators would tend to put it).

I don’t normally go for modern choral music mixed in with early music, but I was much taken by the several lullabies by Veljo Tormis, which contrasted nicely with the Byrd lullaby.

I also enjoyed Owain Park’s own piece, Phos Hilaron. I cannot honestly claim to have got much out of Joanna Marsh’s pieces, though.

But basically I loved the gig – they are a wonderful ensemble – so when Owain Park announced that we could buy pre-release copies (due out Easter Weekend) of the group’s debut album on exit, I was up there with my £12 like a shot.

You can order/buy the album from all the usual outlets or direct from the band’s site by clicking below:

English Motets (2018)

Below is a video from an unspecified place of The Gesualdo Six singing some Tallis – a piece from the album but not from the gig.

Likewise, the following piece of Thomas Tomkins (seen below in Ely Cathedral) is on the album but wasn’t on show at the gig:

They only sang one piece of Gesualdo on the night – not the following one, but I can’t let you sample The Gesualdo Six without Gesualdo himself:

Finally, below is a little documentary piece about the group from SJSS itself two years ago. They look unfeasibly young in the vid – they still look young but not THAT young. Two years is a long time for a boy band. Another couple of years on the road and they might look like The Rolling Stones by 2020.

All of this rather puts my own attempt at some seasonal, medieval-style performance into the shade:

Canticle For Lauds On The Third Day Of Easter: Deus Intellegit, Litorean Order, c1300

Music in New France & Québec, Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal, St John’s Smith Square, 15 February 2018

I took rare unilateral action to see this concert. I booked myself a single ticket. I’m really glad I did.

It sounded so interesting in the SJSS brochure, but could I persuade Janie (Daisy) a few months ago to agree to venture into Westminster on what she suggested might turn out to be a bitterly cold Thursday evening in February? Could I heck.

Here’s a link to the SJSS rubric, which worked so well on me but not so well on Daisy.

As it turned out, it was a bitterly cold Thursday evening in February.

I had a Skype music lesson with Ian Pittaway before heading off to SJSS. I am working on some very strange and ancient plainchant with him at the moment. I’m trying to sing in a slightly higher register now, which seems to have more going for it with my voice than the lower register I find safer. Also some tutorial on transposing complex lute parts into simpler baritone ukulele (Tudor guitar) parts without turning, for example, Byrd’s “Though Amaryllis Dance In Green”, into a banal three or four chord pop song.

William Byrd
An evening of early music without my Byrd
On all of these matters, I’m sorry to say, Ian Pittaway concludes his seemingly helpful advice with the words, “that’s it – now keep practising that before the next lesson.”  Why can’t he teach well enough so that I can get it 100% right first time and not need to practice? That’s the sort of teacher I want. I’d even pay a few bob extra for one of those teachers. 😉  I mentioned this evening’s concert and asked Ian if he had heard of Aux-Cousteaux – Ian asked if he was a deep sea diver who also composed music. Does this guy know much at all about early music or is he just spoofing us all with his waggish manner?

Joking apart, the music lessons are going rather well in fact. But by the time I had finished fiddling around with one or two of those ideas in order to try and cement them in my brain, then finished off a couple of pieces of work that I really wanted to get out of the way before the concert, it was time for me to get my skates on…more importantly, time for me to don my hat, scarf and gloves…and head for Smith Square.

Preparing spiritually for a cold Québécois evening

The crypt was swarming with Québécois dignitaries being entertained and fawned over by the waiting staff, so my half-baked plan to pre-book the dining arrangements for my next visit with Janie, in May, came to nought. I hasten to add that the entertainment and fawning was a very dignified drinks and nibbles reception for the lucky Québécois swarm. Nothing “Presidents Club” about it.

Anyway, instead I bought a copy of the CD which seemed to be closest to the evening’s performance…

…then took up position along with a small posse from the regular SJSS front row mafia. The Québécois dignitaries had been allocated that “middle of the front block” which is deemed to be the best seats, although frankly, for a small enemble like this, I think front row is best even in a hall the size of SJSS.

I immediately knew the music was going to be to my taste. Ten voices singing a cappella, beautifully.

On researching the matter before the concert, I wondered why the Québécois considered this French early Baroque music to be their own. After all, Quebec City and Montreal were tiny little trading posts during that early Baroque period – a few hundred people in each place, mostly fur traders with a hundred-or-so monks in each town praying for the inhabitants to be spared famine, pestilence, Algonquian marauders, British marauders or combinations of several such fatal misfortunes.

It was all explained in the programme.

Firstly, some of the music they performed on the night is sung in the Abenaki language – that of the indigenous Algonquian people of that part of Canada – which is quite interesting. So it wasn’t all fisticuffs with the indigenous locals in those days.

In some ways more interesting is the sacred music of the early Baroque period by French composers, such as Henri Frémart, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy and especially Artus Aux-Cousteaux. The monks brought the current music with them when they settled New France in the mid 17th century. There’s some very good music in there, which apparently would have been completely lost had scores not survived in Quebec, as all known copies of many of these composers’ works were destroyed in France at the time of the revolution.

So in those ways, this music is the Québécois people’s own.

The embedded sample is part of one of the Aux-Cousteaux pieces they performed on the night, so it gives you a very good feel for what we heard. I recommend that those who cannot resist the Aux-Cousteaux/Jacques Cousteau pun listen to this clip while submerged in their bath. Other folk, simply wallow in the delicious sound.

There was one modern piece by a young Québécois composer named Maurice-G Du Berger, who was at the SJSS gig to hear his piece and took a bow with the choir. It might be the first time I’ve seen a composer who was probably the youngest person on the stage in such circumstances.

At the end of the concert, the round of applause was resounding, but it wasn’t until towards the end of it that I realised that the Québécois dignitaries were doing that very North American thing of giving a standing ovation – the result being that the front row mafia was doing the SJSS regulars/British thing of politely but loudly applauding, while the rest of the audience was on its feet.

I hope the visiting choir didn’t think it was being dissed by the regulars, because the few I spoke to were all transfixed by the music and by all accounts the CDs sold like hot cakes in the interval.

It was a truly delightful concert, to round off a very interesting day of early music…

…but by heck it was a cold journey home that night. Not even faintly cold by Canadian standards of course, but for a wimp of a Londoner like me, it was well taters.

The Italian Connection: Sounds Baroque, St John’s Smith Square, 19 January 2018

I sort of have to drag Janie to SJSS these days, especially in the winter. There is a rather cold, austere feel to the place; increasingly so. The main hall looks tired and well overdue for a refurb or even the major overhaul that has been oft muted for years.

But I still love the place. This programme looked very interesting as it comprised performers we’d not seen before and several composers & works that would similarly be new to us. So Janie relented for once, recalling that she loves the crypt bar and heck, it was Friday evening after all.

Here is a link to the full programme of works for the evening.

The concert had not sold well, sadly, which does add to the coldness of the SJSS atmosphere. We sat at the front to get a good look.

I was especially keen to see the advertised “archlute, theorbo and guitar”, having always thought that the theorbo and the archlute were the same thing.

Archlute, Theorbo and Guitar?

I went home none the wiser, as I am pretty sure we only saw two such instruments and it is quite hard to switch theorbo-type instruments unnoticed, I imagine. Perhaps the rubric was supposed to read “archlute (theorbo) and guitar”.

I’m obsessing.

The soprano, Anna Dennis, is clearly a superb singer and performed wonderfully well, although we sensed that she was not feeling 100% well. What a trooper.

Henrik Persson blessed us with fine playing on a seven string bass viol, which always feels like a bit of a “buy six get one free” bonus when we see one of those. Perhaps that makes up for the lack of the third plucky-strummy instrument.

Julian Perkins was consistently excellent on the harpsichord.

We both felt that James Akers was more natural on the theorbo than on the baroque guitar. Perhaps we are becoming more fussy as I learn the basics of that instrument, but it just looked and sounded like more of an effort for Akers when he played the guitar. Challenging pieces, I suspect.

Anna Dennis and Purcell were the stars of the show; the rest all felt somewhat secondary. But we enjoyed the whole evening and lamented the fact that so few people had seen such truly top notch Baroque singing in that fitting, albeit now genteely distressed, setting.

Ferio Saxophone Quartet, St John’s Smith Square, 8 December 2016

Slightly scruffy look for SJSS, even at lunchtime

You don’t see a lot of all saxophone combos. So much so, that when I saw the Ferio Saxophone Quartet concert listed for Thursday lunchtime on a day that I had kept clear for a client meeting that had been deferred until the new year, I thought, “I’ll give that a try”.

Naturally, I cut things a bit fine, trying to finish off some work before heading off for SJSS and then realising that I hadn’t really allowed much margin for error on timing.

Fortunately a Circle Line train came quite quickly. Then, at South Kensington, all of a sudden I could hear a Saxophone combo on the train, playing Hit The Road Jack very well indeed. I looked along the carriage and there indeed were several saxophonists giving it plenty. I managed to snap a couple of them with my smart phone camera.

“Perhaps the Ferio lot are also cutting it a bit fine for the gig,” I thought, “although they look a bit scruffy for SJSS, even at lunchtime.”

Between Sloane Square and Victoria, the combo played Blue Moon very well indeed. But clearly they weren’t the Ferio lot, as the “Anonymous Saxtet” got off the tube at Victoria, after relieving me and others of our small change (voluntarily I hasten to add).

I concluded that saxophone combos are like buses and tubes. You wait what seems like a lifetime for one, then two come along one after the other.

In the end I got to SJSS just a tiny bit late, but in true lunchtime concert fashion they let us latecomers slide in at the back of the hall and then move forward after the first piece. The first piece was a Bach Prelude and Fugue and I reckon I caught most of the Prelude as well as the Fugue.

When I moved forward between pieces, a kindly couple made extra space for me so I could remove my hat and coat quickly, take up an excellent seat and then they also gave me a look at their programme (I picked up my own copy at the end). I’m sure that nice couple would even have shared their sandwiches with me had they brought sandwiches, but they hadn’t. SJSS lunchtime concerts are not really “eat your sandwiches in the concert” type lunchtime concerts.

This was the Ferio String Quartet Concert I heard – link to SJSS site here.

Just in case SJSS archiving isn’t up to snuff, here is the same page saved on Ogblog.

They were very good indeed, the Ferio Saxophone Quartet. I especially enjoyed their arrangement of Grieg’s Holberg Suite, which was the centrepiece of the concert really.

The concert was very well attended – 150+ people, I’d guess, perhaps even 200 if you count the sniffly but very attentive outing of schoolkids.

The Ferios are doing a short residency at SJSS and there are a couple more gigs to go next spring. Here is a link to a short vid the quartet made about the concert I heard and their residency.

The next concert, on 23 April 2017, is all British music entitled Best of British, which seems to me a wasted opportunity. Left up to me, that concert would have been named:

Yes, Sax Please, We’re British…

…but unfortunately such marketing matters never seem to be left up to me. I can’t imagine why not.

Laura Snowden, Lunchtime Concert, St John’s Smith Square, 1 December 2016

A planned, much needed break in the middle of a busy day in a busy week.

First stop, Lock and Co. to replace my sorely missed Vermont hat. No blame attached to whatever happened during our Royal Academy evening a few weeks ago; merely to say that Daisy should stick to driving duties and avoid hat-stand duties; while I should retain full responsibility for my own hats whatever other duties I am undertaking.

Then on to St John’s Smith Square for the lunchtime concert.

selfie-with-new-hat-and-enormous-organ
Selfie With New Hat and Enormous Organ

I messaged Daisy with the above picture and caption, to let her know that I had replaced the hat and to show off the fact that I was taking a substantial enough break to take in a lunchtime concert on my tod. The reply:

What the…?

The concert was lovely. We saw Laura Snowden at SJSS a couple of years ago; a very talented young guitarist who comes across very nicely.

The centrepiece of this concert was a new work by Wally Gunn, an American composer who seems to have written this piece especially for Laura under commission of a young composers/performers scheme.

Laura show-pieced the new work by framing it with works by better-known composers, although not especially well-known works. A beautiful Dowland to start. Then Villa-Lobos’s preludes; I realised I knew the first well but had never heard the others before.

I enjoyed the Wally Gunn piece; it was based on Darwin diaries and had some very evocative passages, although the whispered words didn’t really float my Beagle, as it were.

Then a couple of Barrios waltzes and finally a short piece by Rodrigo.

Here is a link to the SJSS site page for the concert…

…and in case SJSS isn’t archiving as it should, here is my permanent link of that page.

Perfect way to set myself up for an afternoon of grind and also for an evening of jamming with DJ on my baritone baroq-ulele. Although, after listening to a virtuoso like Laura Snowden, my own pluckings and strummings are brought into perspective.

 

La Nuova Musica, St John’s Smith Square, 20 March 2015

This was a lovely concert at St John’s Smith Square, on a Friday evening. Just what the doctor ordered.

SJSS is a good setting for all manner of music, but especially sacred music like Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater could have been written for the place.

Janie is especially partial to a bit of Stabat Mater of the Pergolesi variety, which is probably why we booked this one. That and the fact that it was on a Friday evening, a favourite slot of ours for some truly relaxing music.

This concert was a great way to start the weekend after a busy week.

20th Century Masterpieces For Guitar, Laura Snowden, St John’s Smith Square, 26 February 2015

Just a few days after seeing Miloš at The Wig, Janie and I saw another guitar concert, this time Laura Snowden at SJSS.

A bit unfair on Laura, the comparison. She is very good indeed, but clearly not Miloš level; at least not yet.

Her musical choices were a little tougher too.  I really like the Villa-Lobos guitar stuff, but it isn’t everyone’s taste. None of the stuff she performed would be.

But she plays with great clarity and warmth.

We enjoyed our evening and I vowed to return. So far, just the once and alone to a lunchtime concert – click here. But Janie liked her too.

Janie tends to makes a fuss about traipsing to SJSS, then tends to be pleasantly surprised at how near it is and how easily she can park. This evening was no exception.

Passiontide, Academia Musica Choir, St John’s Smith Square, 19 April 2014

Janie is not quite as keen on St John’s Smith Square as she is on the Wigmore Hall. It’s not quite the same sort of warm, intimate space.

But whenever we go there she realises that she likes the bar in the crypt and that we often hear music that sounds great in a church, which is of course exactly what this venue used to be.

Easter weekend and some baroque music suited to that time of year:

Very high quality singing for a semi-professional choir.

It all sounded beautiful.

Mr Simpson’s Little Consort, St John’s Smith Square, 12 December 2013

I took my business partner Michael to this lunchtime concert after our December Board meeting.

It wasn’t very crowded, although there was a reasonable audience that lunchtime.

The image below shows the programme we heard.

Click here for a link to the Mr Simpson’s WordPress site:

Below is a recording of this troupe performing a Holborne Pavan and Galliard, which I believe we heard that day:

Below is a sample of Cate McKee singing, but she didn’t sing this beautiful Purcell song that day at SJSS:

We heard a fair bit of Orlando Gibbons that day – perhaps my first time or at least the first time I really noticed how much I like his sound. Here’s a vid of some other people doing another of Gibbons’s viol works:

Laudamus Te, English Baroque Choir, Brandenburg Sinfonia, St John’s Smith Square, 16 March 2013

I’d never heard the Bach Magnificat in D played live but had always loved my recording of it (by The Sixteen – click here or image below):

I thought SJSS would be a magnificent setting to hear the piece live – after all that is where my lovely recording of the piece had been recorded. I was right.

In the first half, we heard the Schubert Mass in G, which I enjoyed more than Janie did, although she quite liked it. It was followed by a world premier of a JohnMcCabe piece named Psalm-Cantata, which frankly did little for either of us.

But we did both really enjoy the Magnificat.

Below is a video of Nikolaus Harnoncourt with an unidentified choir and orchestra playing the Magnificat magnificently: