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Sinfonia opens season with 'Rhapsody'
T&T Newsday, August 12 2008
THE NATIONAL Sinfonia Orchestra (NSO)
will open it’s fifth season of
performances with Malaysian concert
pianist Sothie Paul-Duraisamy, at
Queen’s Hall on Sunday at 6 pm. This
concert, under the patronage of
President George Maxwell Richards,
represents the third pairing of this
celebrated pianist and Trinidad’s
foremost symphonic orchestra. This year
they will play together the popular
Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” This work,
the first of its kind to incorporate the
jazz idiom into the Concert Hall,
received instant acceptance into the
piano repertoire and is one of the most
recorded of all piano concertos.
Duraisamy has performed in concerts around the world but
professes a fondness for performing in Trinidad. The
Rhapsody is one of her favourite performing pieces, and
she constantly returns to Trinidad to perform for local
audiences who are still thrilled with her last Rhapsody
— the Rhapsody on a “Theme of Paganini” performed with
the NSO two years ago. Since then she has been
concertising — most recently in Bangalore, India and
Perth, Australia.
Trinidadian clarinettist Kwame Lewis, now resident in
Boston, will also join the orchestra to perform the
“Weber Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra” to
celebrate the attainment of his Dip ABRSM in clarinet
performance. Lewis is a former music director of the QRC
Scout Band. Among other works on the programme will be
the equally popular “Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March”
with the theme that is played at so many graduation
ceremonies; and two Mark Loquan calypsos: “Colours Again”
and “Nostalgia,” which have been arranged for pan by
Liam Teague and transcribed for orchestra by American
Gary Gibson.
In a review of Festival Arts Chorale production of The
Sound of Music, one reviewer commented that the NSO,
directed by Jessel Murray, “sounded like a recording of
a CD” — a testament to the growing calibre of the
playing of this group. The NSO is currently in a
rigorous workshop at the Department of Creative and
Festival Arts, UWI with tutors from the United States.
This group, managed by the Orchestral Society of
Trinidad and Tobago, continues to provide the finest age
appropriate repertoire for this intergenerational
orchestra.
Tickets, reasonably priced at $125 are available at
Queen’s Hall Box Office (621-5102); Joyce E Ali and
Company Ltd (624-3037); and Sanch Electronix (663-1384).
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