Holy Trinity’s annual October Trinity Festival is well and truly in the village calendar. It is going from strength to strength. This year’s festival kicked off on Friday 6th October with a concert presented by the talented youth of the village. This was followed on Saturday with a classical concert and culminated on Sunday afternoon with an arts, craft and music fair. Thank you to Richard Hudson for reviewing Friday’s Youth Concert and Guy Silk for reviewing Saturday’s Festival Concert.
The addition to the festival of this youth concert allowed for a greater number of performers to demonstrate their abilities. And what an evening it was!
Besides a number of instrumental soloists with their own accompanists we were fortunate to have groups of young people from both Humphrey Perkins School and Motion Dance (which also includes singers). The evening was impressively opened by Noah Ferguson’s performance of Earth Day; a poem by Jane Nolan which led into other Humphrey Perkins’ pupils with their Earth Dance. Following violin and piano solos by Edward Black and Edward Goldsmith respectively we enjoyed a group of vocal solos and dance pieces from Motion Dance. The first half was concluded by Humphrey Perkins Orchestra playing Scarborough Fair. At a time when interest in music is waning in many high schools it is really encouraging to see this group given the opportunity to perform to an audience. They went on to perform again after the interval.
One of the joys of seeing performances by Motion Dance is seeing how their members progress as they get older and gain experience. This was fully demonstrated in their second-half performances. Maturity and hours of practice as well as rare talent were also clearly apparent from the concert’s older instrumental soloists, Edie Bott on ’cello and Joseph Geary playing the flute. Both of whose performances were stunning. The rousing finale was provided by Humphrey Perkins pupils with an arrangement of three songs from Matilda a musical they had previously performed at school. After this wonderfully entertaining evening I think we can safely say that a separate Youth Concert has established itself as a fixture in future Trinity Festivals.
The church has a lovely interior with pleasing acoustics, a rector in Clive Watts, with an enviable side-hustle as Master of Ceremonies, and a piano. I mention this because the final piece of the evening – Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals – requires two. An awkward problem but resolved by festival pianist Jeremy Kimber kindly making his own available. The performance of the piece, which closed the concert (and of which more anon) gave not the slightest hint that the piano had been carted to the church on a farm trailer, towed by a tractor, which is unlikely to have done it much good. It probably wasn’t great for the trailer either.
A wide range of musical treats was on offer during the first half, all of them introduced by Clive amid plugs for how good the samosas would be when the interval came. Two excellent vocal soloists in Philipa Jackson and David Morris brought us O Mio Babbino Caro, La Donna è Mobile and the anthem from Chess. If the first two don’t immediately ring bells, key them into Youtube when you have a moment and they may sound familiar. Earlier, the combined strings had brought us Grieg’s 18th century-style Holberg Suite, and Jeremy Kimber had accompanied the string principals in a movement from Robert Schumann’s piano quintet. “Listen out for the bit that sounds like Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” said Clive. We did, and it did.
And so, to the interval, where the samosas were indeed superb and, washed down by a glass of something suitable for the occasion, the perfect preparation for part two. Holst’s St Paul’s Suite got us under way, with a samosa-fuelled sprint of a finale, which got us all into the right mood for a pair of piano duets. By this time, the two pianos – that’s to say the church piano and the tractor piano – were positioned back-to-back at the front of the stage. Jeremy Kimber was on one of these and was joined by Matthew Clemmet a fine music student at Oxford, for duets by Poulenc and Milhaud. The first was all grace and easy charm; the second spectacular. Then it was time to join all of the other players for the ‘zoo on steroids’ that is Carnival of the Animals. Far too many memorable moments in it to single any one of them out and Clive was certain we would want to hear the finale again as an encore, which naturally we did.
The festival continues to go from strength to strength. Do give it a go next year if you haven’t tried it before. And the samosas really are very good. Did I mention that?
The three-day event finished on Sunday afternoon with a chance to buy some early Christmas presents. As in previous years, there were beautifully sewn fabrics; decorated glassware; fine art cards; hand-made jewellery; paintings and ceramics for sale at stalls around the church.
You could wander round, deciding on your purchases, while being serenaded at different times during the afternoon by James Martin on his guitar; Peter Yates playing his clarinet with Jan Robertson singing; and folk music from Pandy Bats (Bob Edge, Steve Cartwright and Julie Wright); or slip into the church hall for a quiet cup of tea and slice of cake while listening to a poetry recital by local poets (including Barrow’s very own Helen Sadler).