Concert celebrates centuries of music

Eric Morecambe’s centenary will be celebrated by the only town’s only palm court orchestra this March.

Bring Me Sunshine, Morecambe and Wise’s famous theme tune, will be performed by the award-winning Promenade Concert Orchestra as their tribute to Eric who was born in the town in May 1926.

In the same year, Take me down to Morecambe, a song specifically written for the town’s 1926 carnival, was composed and has been newly orchestrated by founder and conductor, Howard Rogerson, for this special concert at The Platform on Sunday, March 22 at 3pm.

The Morecambe-based Promenade Concert Orchestra is the country’s only large palm court orchestra and the March performance provides opportunities to enjoy well known tunes alongside some rarely heard for decades.

All the tunes at Music From The Palm Court date from the past two centuries and are part of Howard’s large and growing orchestral library collected over more than 50 years from places where palm court orchestras once played. 

“The Palm Court was a follow-on from the Court musical entertainment for the rich of the 17^th and 18^th Centuries to the railway travelling public of the 19^th Century, where, in the great ‘Palaces of Entertainment’, live music flowed from within, surrounded by palm trees and aspidistras,” said Howard.

“Many composers fulfilled the need for this popular music but other than a handful of names, most have been forgotten, though their melodies live on.”

Among the rarities to be performed in Morecambe include The Comet, a lively piccolo solo from Howard’s Blackpool Winter Gardens library collection, not performed for a century, and to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of black English composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the orchestra will play a vintage suite of ballet music from his opera, Hiawatha.

There will also be a rare outing for Descriptive Fantasia, Gipsy Life, by Charles le Thiere. During the pandemic lockdown Howard edited two of le Thiere’s Operatic Fantasias for clarinet and piano and created another in his style, now available on a CD entitled The Lily of Killarney.

The concert returns to the 21^st Century with Frivolous Frolics, recently written by Light Music Society Trustee, composer, music director and performer, Jim Cooke.

Established in 2007, the Promenade Concert Orchestra features professional, semi-professional and excellent amateur musicians from the Lancaster, Morecambe and Kendal area.

Their concert takes place on March 22. Tickets are priced £18 and accompanied children can attend for free. To book, phone The Platform box office on 01524 582803; email platformboxoffice@lancaster.gov.uk or visit www.lancaster.gov.uk/platform