Jack and the musical giants

Fairytale introduction to classical music for young people

THE Jubilee Ensemble will perform a family concert on Saturday, January 30, at St George The Martyr Church, Wash Common, from 4pm to 5pm. They will be joined by actor Peter Mooney in Alan Ridout’s Jack and the Beanstalk for string quartet and narrator. There will also be well-known music by other favourite musical ‘giants’, such as Purcell, Mozart, Strauss and Tchaikovsky, making this a perfect introduction to classical music for children and young people.

Actor Peter Mooney is known to audiences from his recent performances in the West End smash hit The Commitments, and will soon be appearing at The Watermill. The Jubilee Ensemble is a flexible ensemble of musicians – including Oxford cellist Coral Lancaster, with Newbury violinists John Kane and Jane Kane and Nick Evans-Pughe (viola) from Hertfordshire – all with a passion to engage with young people and reach out to new audiences.

Jack and the Beanstalk, that most English of fairytales, was set to music by Alan Ridout in 1977 following a commission by members of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. It was originally intended for performances in schools in the storytelling tradition of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. The musical style is quintessentially English, reminiscent of Vaughan Williams and Holst. Coral Lancaster says: “Alan Ridout was very keenly interested in education and wrote a lot of music for children. In Jack and the Beanstalk he draws out a great variety of colours and moods from the stringed instruments and also brings a charming humour to the narrative.”

The concert will begin at 4pm. Tickets are available at the door, priced £6 (£20 for families).
Visit www.jubileeensemble.com