I did my last proms of the season this week, with two on the same night as Rufus Wainwright did symphonic versions of his Albums Want One and Want Two. These were my fourth and fifth Proms this year and my third and fourth time seeing Rufus live. I was expecting it to be good, but it was even better than I expected. It wasn’t shown on TV, but there are a few clips of rehearsals and the like on social, so have this one of Go or Go Ahead as a teaser.
Anyway, apart from the fact that I love Rufus’s music one of the reasons why it was so brilliant was because I think I’ve found my favourite seats to sit in at the Royal Albert Hall. I’ve told you before – recently and maybe ad nauseum – that I used to play clarinet in concert bands. I didn’t do it because I like performing in front of audiences, in fact I would go as far as saying that I dislike playing in concerts, but I do it because that’s what you do in a band. What I like is being part of the music going on around me. And sat in the west choir was the closest I’ve felt to being in a performance, without the stress of having to actually play.
I was right behind the trumpets with the trombones to the left of them and the timpani and drum kit to the right. It was so close you could almost read the music: I could read the song titles at the top and then I could see where the blocks of rests were and where the entries were and a bit of the types of notes but not the detail. And it was wonderful. Yes, a little heavy on the brass and percussion in the mix, but as an experience it was something else.
And the added bonus in all this, is that the orchestra was the BBC Concert Orchestra who have an amazing trumpet player as their head of section and I could listen to her play close up. Her name is Kate Moore and I first spotted her a decade ago in a film music prom where she was playing all the good bits in the James Bond Medley. I’ve listened to that time out of number – including on a lot of night shifts where I used to use it as an accompaniment to a particularly risky task I had to do – where if you got it wrong you could take a TV channel off air! Have a watch and tell me it’s not amazing:
Any ways, there were plenty of lovely trumpet entries to listen to her play close up; and if I had been a percussionist I would have love to have played the timpani so being up close there was great too. And for all that I was behind Rufus, it was still the closest I’ve sat all season. Just lovely.
If you want to listen back to Rufus – it’s on BBC Sounds – here is Want One and this is Want Two. Enjoy.
Have a great Sunday everyone.
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