Coffee Day at our Club Rooms 29th August 2010

A Coffee Day with a difference! We held it at our Club Rooms this month and enabling members to familiarize and enjoy the Club's new CVP-509 Clavinova. We also used the occasion to launch the Club's new Video Projector and big screen so that we can show a close-up of the players hands on the keyboards or project the lyrics for sing-a-longs etc. It was great that professional musicians, John Bercich and Kane Steves could come along and join in the fun! The meeting started at 1 pm and continued until a little after 5 pm.

   

  

                                       

 

 

Concert for Age Concern’s Prescott Club 25th August 2010

On behalf of the North Shore Organ and Keyboard Club, Gordon Sutherland, Peter Brophy and George Watt gave an hour's concert for Age Concern's Prescott Club. Peter and Gordon played a Korg Pa1X keyboard and George played the Church's acoustic piano. These concerts are part of the Club's desire to share its music with the community at large. The Prescott Club concerts are in collaboration with the Creative Keyboard Club of Browns Bay. We are hoping to bring along the Club's data projector and big screen for the October concert and have a Sing-A-Long session!

                        

 

                                          

 

              

An Afternoon with Carole Littlejohn in Papamoa 25th July 2010

An afternoon with Carole Littlejohn at Ocean Shores Village with some of her students and friends from the North Shore Organ and Keyboard Club. Photos courtesy of Colleen Kerr.

When Carole Littlejohn invited Peter Brophy, Gordon Sutherland and Colleen Kerr to come down to Papamoa and participate in a Concert she was putting on for the residents of the Ocean Shores Village, Papamoa, we were delighted to accept the invite. For one reason it was going to be a fun event but also because all three mentioned above and Carole Littlejohn are members of The North Shore Organ and Keyboard Club, Takapuna. Part of the Club's mission is taking our music out to the Community at large (the Club’s Header includes “Proudly bringing music to the Community”) where it is sometimes difficult for senior citizens to travel to outside venues. About 150 residents and family members of the participating students turned-up for the afternoon Concert and that made is most satisfying. The audience seemed to love the format of the Concert also, what with variety of instruments, styles of music and experience levels of the participants.

Certainly one of the highlights for the writer was to finish the Concert with a quartet playing: “Cabaret” and “Drifting and Dreaming”. The Quartet consisted of Carole Littlejohn on a Korg Pa1X keyboard; Peter Brophy on a Yamaha PSR-910 keyboard; Colleen Kerr on Yamaha piano; and Gordon Sutherland on his Korg Pa1X keyboard.

 

It certainly is nice to see the youth of today learning to play the keyboard whether that is an electronic keyboard or acoustic piano and this was a great venue for some of Carole’s junior pupils to gain experience playing for a large audience. They acquitted themselves very well it must be said.

A big thank you to Bev Taylor from the Ocean Shores Village for allowing Carole Littlejohn to stage the Concert at their lovely Village. And not forgetting Carole Littlejohn that did a great job organizing the event and then being actively involved in the Concert.

The photos below have been forwarded by email and as such are low resolution. Should anybody want a high resolution copy please contact Gordon Sutherland or Colleen Kerr at the email address in the right hand margin.

   

 

        

   

Club Night 3rd August 2010

A packed house enjoyed a fantastic evening of music at our Club Rooms. This was the first Club Night with our brand new Yamaha Clavinova CVP-509 and if we thought our CVP-305 was good well this latest technology beastie just blew us away with it's responsiveness and clarity of sound. The first half saw Club members entertain us on the Clavinova with one member, Yvonne Moller, playing her Korg Pa1X. We also had a Japanese visitor play the piano for us with great sensitivity - thank you Mayu Murakami.
The second half was taken over by our guest artist, Roy Steen, who captured our enthusiasm for his lovely touch for about 50 minutes. Roy played his Roland G-800 for the first four pieces to great effect. He then played two pieces on the Clavinova by popular request and then proceeded to wow us with his mastery of the organ when he thrilled us with his superb playing, sounds and choice of songs on the Club's Technics GA3 theatre organ. There was hardly a dry eye in the house by the end of Roy's performance. Thank you Roy for a wonderful evening and also for having visited the Club on several occasions in the last few months to familiarize yourself with the GA3 organ and prepare disks of registrations.
Chris Larking was going to make a cameo appearance to launch our Clavinova but was unfortunately held up with a Corporate gig that extended beyond schedule. The good news though is that the Club still has four pieces or so in credit from Chris for a future evening!

John Beales won the raffle which was a lovely sandwich tray. Thanks as always must go to the Committee members for tirelessly making sure the evening went so well.

And now for the pix… slide the mouse over the photos to see text captions: