Mar/100
Kamloops in Western Canada to Limerick
“Bruce (Dunn) and I share an Irish connection in that we have worked together for several years in Ireland as part of the Summer Music on the Shannon Festival in Limerick, Ireland.”
Here’s KamloopsThisWeek.com – a piece by Dale Bass, published 12 March
It’s a testament to the amazing reach and connections SMS has achieved for Limerick.
Aug/093
SMS Office now closed
Well, we’ve finally disassembled what has been the Summer Music on the Shannon office for 2009. I had some help from Ana Marques, Deirdre Stack Marques and Naoise Stack Marques yesterday and today in expunging all traces of SMS 09 from the Foundation Building at UL. This included taking down all the signs that had been put up on notice boards, walls, and doors throughout the Foundation Building’s ground floor where we operated from, as well as our Room Numbers and maps from the room doors and dressing room doors backstage which served as tuition rooms for the instrumental faculty as well as changing rooms for the many performances on the University Concert Hall stage.
The office itself had to be put back into boxes for transport back to Clare Music Makers which stores SMS office stuff during the year. The computer equipment (consisting of a 17″ CRT monitor, two speakers, an aging epson printer, and CPU, plus cables for same) has been unplugged, battened down where necessary, and taped up ready for transport also. All the tables and chairs have been removed and put back where we got them. So I’ve finally moved out of UCH and the SMS office has gone into hibernation until the summer of 2010, when it will again spring into existence all going well.
The music library is still in the process of being dismounted and put back in its multitude of sturdy plastic containers. This job has fallen to Bob Creech and Bruce Dunn and should be complete by this evening or tomorrow morning. All the music on loan from Germany, Sweden and the UK has to be packaged up and posted off. The remainder goes back into storage at Clare Music Makers in Ennis. Colie Tubridy will transport it, together with the office, tomorrow or Thursday.
Then there is all the musical equipment that has been on loan from Clare Music Makers, the University of Limerick Orchestra, and others, consisting of music stands, percussion equipment and other bits and pieces, which has to be returned to the owners in pristine state. And last, but not least, there’s the TAM on loan from RTE which has to be taken back to Dublin.
This is some of the essential preparatory work that goes on in the background both before and after an event such as Summer Music on the Shannon, that goes unnoticed by the public, and without which SMS could not take place at all.
Aug/091
Programme for Grand Finale
Here is the programme for the Grand Finale concert of Sunday August 16th last which was streamed live on the web. I had intended on putting it up before the concert but that proved impossible due to the amount of other work which took priority.
- “Two Egwali” (L. Beethoven)
“Andante & Minuetto (W. Mozart)
“Ronde et Salterelle” (Tielman Susato)
Performed by the Brass Ensemble. Leader: Dennis Miller - “The Blues Brothers Revue” (Jay Bocook)
“Mamma Mia” (Michael Brown)
Performed by SMS Wind Band. Conductor: Fred Hannaford - “Petite Sinfonie” – 1st Movement (Gounod)
Performed by SMS Wind Ensemble - “Pictures at an Exhibition” (Mussorgsky)
- “Promenade”
- “The Gnome”
Performed by SMS Senior Orchestra. Conductor: Josef Calef
- “La Clemenza di Tito, ‘Parto, Parto’” (W.A. Mozart)
Performed by Roisin Walshe (Soprano) - “Reformation Symphony” (Mendelssohn)
- “Andante & Chorale”
Performed by SMS Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Bruce Dunn.
I N T E R V A L
- “Danny Boy” (traditional)
Performed by Fiona Last (Oboe), Margaret Cleary (Bassoon), James Hodges (Bassoon), Alex Walker (Bassoon) - “Mary Rose” (Anita Hewitt-Jones)
“Musette” (J.S. Bach, arr. Edward Jurey)
Performed by SMS Intermediate String Ensemble. Conductor: Edmond Dwan - “Mo Ghile Mear” (traditional)
“The Song of the Chanter” (traditional)
“Slow Irish Air” (traditional)
Polkas: “The Kerry Polka” / “Ryan’s Polka” (traditional)
Jigs: “Saddle the Pony” / “The Blackthorn Stick” (traditional)
Performed by SMS Irish Trad Music Group. Director: Christina Vaughan - “Consolation in Db Major” (F. Liszt)
Performed by Paul O’Gorman (Piano) - “The Metronome” (L. Beethoven)
Performed by Eavan Kane & Aifric McArdle (Piano duet) - “Flute Concerto” – 2nd Movement (Reinecke)
Performed by Deirdre Stack Marques (Flute), Allardyce Mallon (Piano) - “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5″ (Brahms)
“The Pink Panther” (H. Mancini)
Performed by SMS Flute Ensemble. Conductors: Tanja Fritschi, Myra Bennett - “Toy Symphony” – 3rd Movement (J. Haydn)
Performed by SMS Senior Orchestra. Conductor: Josef Calef.
Unfortunately Edmond Dwan could not be with us on the day as he had a prior musical engagement of considerable significance in Kilkenny. In his absence, Joanne Cater conducted the SMS Intermediate String Ensemble.
The live streaming of this concert has been saved and will be made available on the Summer Music on the Shannon web site as soon as it has been edited. This will take several weeks.
Aug/094
Three (hornless) Tenors sing the Horn Concerto
At the Mozart and Wine fundraiser on Monday night 10 August last, I thought we were in for a treat when Bob Creech stepped forward with his french horn and made to play the Horn Concerto. Instead he was joined by Dennis Miller and Bruce Dunn without their horns. They then proceeded to sing the Horn Concerto to much laughter from the audience.
Left to right: Dennis Miller, Bruce Dunn, Bob Creech
Aug/090
Pigeon trouble at the Paddock
Much hilarity was had this lunch time at the Paddock when a pigeon, realising it was about to fly into the Paddock restaurant, made an emergency hard turn with milimetres to spare and almost got itself entangled in Gillian Mott’s hair. Gillian performed a spectacular ducking manoeuvre while simultaneously letting fly a very audible expletive quiet unlike any sounds that regularly emanate from her violin! Some of the witnesses to this interlude were Bob Creech (though I think Bob had his back turned and his ear bent to his mobile phone at the time), Bruce Dunn, Colie Tubridy, Pat Downes, and Patrick Stack.
Jul/090
Another new face
The Double-Bassist, Alex Nichols, has just arrived at Summer Music on the Shannon. He flew into Dublin yesterday and stayed overnight and got the train down this morning. It’s Alex’s first time in Ireland. He’s based in British Columbia, Canada in small city of 8,000 people whose name I can’t recall. He says it’s mostly made up of third-generation hippies whose grandparents moved there in the 1960s to avoid the Viet Nam draft! What an interesting story!
Alex has known Bob Creech for a long time, but hasn’t seen him for 0ver 20 years. We took Alex to lunch at The Paddock restaurant on campus, and Bob duly made an appearance soon after, as did Bruce Dunn whom Alex knows well. Bruce was surprised to see him, and enquired what brought him so early, to which Alex replied that it was due to the low-cost flight he got only leaving once a week.
I also caught sight of viola player David Gaudry with his characteristic baseball cap worn backwards in the Californian way. He arrived in yesterday but I hadn’t seen him.
Oboist Fernando Gualda also arrived last night from Brazil where he had gone for a short break to see his family. Fernando has been based at the sound lab in Queen’s University, Belfast for the past couple of years, where he has been doing his PhD on some arcane aspect of sound and pitch. In that time he has become a C++ programmer as part of his PhD. I’m looking forward to talking programming with him, and getting some tips on reed-making for the oboe.
It’s all limbering up to be a truely great musical extravaganza!
Jul/090
SMS Opera Faculty (1): Bruce Dunn
Welcome Bruce Dunn Music Director, Opera.
Anyone heard of Kamloops? Want to guess where it is?
This is the first of a series of pages in which we feature SMS Faculty Members.
Bruce Dunn plays French Horn
He studied horn at the University of British Columbia. Joined the horn section of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
He’s also an inspiring Conductor.
To become a conductor, he studied with renowned Japanese conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama. He also studied with Norman Del Mar in England. And at the “International Symphonic Conducting Workshop” in Czech Republic.
Bruce lives in Kamloops, British Colombia, Canada, where he is Music Director of both Kamloops Symphony Orchestra & Symphony of the Kootenays.
I hope Bruce reads this and will honour us with some of his thoughts about SMS, and why he’s decided to commit himself to it.