Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 14 November 2009

snas

THE GALA Celebration Concert was one of several performances for the Highland Young Musicians 21 event, marking 21 years of Regional Music Groups in the area. The two-day festival involved 320 young musicians and showcased incredible musical ability.

Over the last twenty years a variety of music groups have provided a platform to teach and inspire young people from across the Highlands, and the Gala Celebration Concert was a great finale to the weekend as well as a culmination of a lot of hard work.

The Highland Youth Pipe Band opened the performance, linking with Highland Schools Wind Band for the famous Shaker hymn ‘Simple Gifts’, equally well-known as ‘The Lord of the Dance’.

The wind band proceeded to play John Williams’s beautiful piece ‘Hymn to the Fallen’, which was written for the film Saving Private Ryan. Mark Reynolds, who conducts the wind band, was kind enough to give non-music geeks some background knowledge to each piece.

There were several changes to the order of the night’s performance, but not until after the Highland Youth String Orchestra had gone to the movies again for inspiration with songs from Stephen Warbeck’s score for Shakespeare in Love.

All of these pieces were fairly uplifting compared with what followed; Richard Meyer’s appropriately named ‘Curse of the Rosin Eating Zombies from Outer Space’, accompanied with full blown screaming from musicians and audience alike. Give me Stephen Warbeck’s composing any day.

Norman Bolton, Highland Council’s Music Development Officer, presented the “Welcome Back” speech before the interval instead of after, meaning everyone’s tummies had to wait a little longer for their ice-cream.

Nevertheless the show went on, and the ceilidh band ‘snas (I’m yet to be enlightened as to what it stands for) [I’m told it’s a Gaelic equivalent of ‘cool’ – Ed.] offered up a lovely little set of sly digs at fellow musicians’ and, of course, some tunes too.

The Highland Regional Youth Orchestra, conducted by Susan Dingle and led by Emma Donald, introduced the second half with Shostakovich’s The Gadfly, which was perhaps the best set of the night. This musical group was filled with familiar faces from school, and loud whoops rang out across the theatre, as indeed for all the performances.

Coisir G sang next and despite not being totally fluent in Gaelic the sound was resonating. The Highland Youth Big Band finished the night on (another) high note with a trip through a variety of musical genres – from Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ to Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’.

Hunter MacKay on guitar was especially good and got a deserving extra mention. The final curtain went down to much applause and it really was a great evening, showing off the amount of talent and commitment of young Highland musicians. Despite the show being perhaps a little long, it was well worth missing The X-Factor for.

© Jo Gratton, 2009

Highland Young Musicians