Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Club Night 6th July 2010

Definitely a top drawer evening with hardly a spare chair left in the house! Members and visitors were treated to an amazing evening of musical entertainment and variety by some of our very talented members – this being a DIY evening. Arrival music was done by Club President, Gordon Sutherland on his Korg Pa1X. This was followed by a cameo by a guest, Denise Gunson on our Clavinova and very well played too! Colleen Kerr, Club Secretary followed on the Clavinova with three traditional easy listening pieces. Barbara McNab followed on the Clavinova making good use of the built-in rhythms. Peter Littlejohn followed playing his Korg Pa1X and adding vocals too!  Second-half saw Peter Jackson entertain us with his super smooth crooning vocals playing along with midi files from his Korg Pa1X. Peter’s jokes were pretty good too! Sure were a lot of Korgs this evening! Finally, we were treated to a mini concert by our very own, Takashi Iida (Taka) who brought along his brand new Yamaha Electone. What wonderful arrangements and perfect execution of a variety of pieces as diverse as Elgar to The Beatles. Here is Taka’s programme:
  • Pomp and Circumstance March Op. 39 No.1 in D – Sir Edward Elgar
  • The Sound of Music – Rodgers and Hammerstein          
  • Tonight I Celebrate My Love – Gerry Goffin and Michael Masser
  • La reine de Saba – Charles Gounod
  • Let it be  - Lennon and McCartney
  • Super Star – Sibel Tuzun
  • African Symphony - Van McCoy
  • Jurassic Park - John Williams
    Gorgeous Taka, thank you so much for bring all your gear and giving us a veritable feast of magnificent music. 

                                    Stop Press!
    Exciting news was given to the meeting. The Club is delighted and proud to announce that it has just purchased a brand new top-of-the-line latest model Clavinova CVP-509. This is the ‘Rolls Royce’ of digital ensemble pianos. It has the leading-edge sounds, rhythms and digital effects processors (DSP’s) as found on the Yamaha Tyros 3 flag-ship keyboard. Not only this but each note is sampled 5 times to give as close a sound to an acoustic piano as technology permits presently (that is why they are called the 500 series). But wait there is more! The speakers and amplification system have been enhanced even more than on the previous 400 series range. Also, the machine now comes with a crystal clear large screen so that those of our members that struggle with small print can read the screen easily. Yamaha have done this with the 500 series by using TFT screen technology which gives a sharper image and can be seen from more oblique angles. Here is a shot of our new Clavinova. 


              The Club's brand new top-of-the-line Yamaha CVP-509 Clavinova

    We have worked hard as a Committee over the last two and a half years to be able to accumulate the funds to purchase this instrument but we could not have done it without the support of our members and so we hope you will enjoy in years to come this magnificent instrument. We will try to have some Coffee Days at the Club later this year so that more of our members can become familiar with the instrument. Further, as a celebration of this new Clavinova we are organizing a Sunday evening Concert on 18th July at 7.30 pm at our Club premises. We are fortunate enough to have secured Darren Smith and Andy Keys (National Demonstrator for MusicWorks) to be our guest artists. Be prepared to be amazed at the sound improvement and capabilities of this amazing instrument. Refer to the Flyer posted on this Web Page for further details. We hope you will be able to come and support the Club at this Celebratory Concert and help bolster our flagging funds! Visitors are most welcome.
    And now for the photos taken of our artists on the night and we thank them very much for their splendid musical contributions as we thank our Committee for organizing the Club Night so effectively.

    Hint: Hover your mouse over the photos to see text captions          
                
        Little Jack Horner sat in the corner. The Club President fronted-up to playing the arrival music on his Korg Pa1X. Photo courtesy of Colleen Kerr.  Newly discovered Denise Gunson did a guest appearance for us and played spendldly. Thank you Denise and please share your music with us in the future. Club Secretary, Colleen Kerr, played three lovely pieces for us. It was fitting that our Secretary played our Clavinova CVP-305 for the last time. As next month we shall have the brand new top-of- the-line Clavinova CVP-509 installed in our Club premises! The CVP-305 is still a great machine though and it has served us well over the last two years.           Barbara McNab making good use of the built-in arranger and playing with the added feature of a full orchestra! Good stuff Barbara.    

        Peter Littlejohn brought his Korg Pa1X along and entertained us with both playing and vocals using the sophisticated built-in TC Helicon harmonizer.       Peter Jackson brought his Korg Pa1X as well and sang along with midi songs from the keyboard with his usual very smooth crooning style voice. Hey, the jokes he interspersed had us 'in tuts' laughing also!

    The raffle prize of a lovely water jug was won by Marlene Forrest.

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