This coming Saturday (October 14), Tonbridge Music Club’s 61st season gets underway. Here, member and spokesperson Rachel Davies tells the Times what’s on the bill…
The nights are drawing in and autumn is here, and happily that means that Tonbridge Music Club’s 2023/24 Season is about to begin.
This year is its 61st and as ever, Tonbridge Music Club’s (TMC) long-held aim of bringing first-class music to the town is still very much alive and well.
The first concert of the new season takes place on Saturday October 14. Between then and the final concert, which takes place in June of next year, the club has a mix of musical offerings to appeal to all tastes and ages. There really is something for everyone – from full-length formal evening concerts, to short, intimate Sunday morning ‘Coffee Concerts’ and relaxed daytime events suitable for younger ears.
We begin this coming Saturday, with Ensemble 360 playing for us in the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul. Four string players and a clarinettist will bring us an exciting and varied programme of music by such composers as Dvorak, Josef Suk and Coleridge-Taylor. The Ensemble has been praised by The Guardian as “one of the most adaptable chamber groups in the country.”
This will be followed by something completely different on November 5: a Sunday morning Coffee Concert at Somerhill School, where several young prize-winners of TMC’s Award Scheme for local, under-18 musicians, will delight us by displaying their extraordinary talent.
Then, on Saturday December 9, Papagena – comprised of five singers and a harp player – will bring us an evening of music and song entitled ‘A Winter’s Dawn’. This is a programme specially designed for a winter’s evening and will include carols, lullabies and songs of hope.
In the New Year, there is much to look forward to. There will be two more Coffee Concerts which take place in January and April and two events for young children: Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants at the EM Forster Theatre in February for children aged 3 to 7 and their families; and another in May for toddlers and their parents or carers.
There will also be three rather more conventional concerts given by Ensemble Molière playing a programme of Baroque music; the brilliant young pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason giving a piano recital including pieces by Chopin, Scarlatti and Prokofiev; and Connaught Brass performing a colourful and varied programme, including works by Vivaldi and Bernstein.
We do hope you will come along and enjoy hearing some live music with us…
If you would like to find out more about TMC’s new season or its membership programme, visit: tmc.org.uk
