New Year Concert
February 28th, 2008
Tollbar’s latest concert was a double celebration, welcoming the new year and marking the college’s 70th birthday, all with a lingering taste of Christmas added.
Fittingly, the evening started with a foot-tapping rendering of Congratulations from the ever-improving Tollbar Band.
The Christmas spirit was provided in the first half of the programme by woodwind trio Charlotte Proctor, Laura Sweeney and Vicky Stubbs playing We Three Kings, the Tollbar Choir singing Ring Out the Bells and the Steel Pan Orchestra bringing a completely different sound to Silent Night.
Three of Tollbar’s latest batch of beautiful voices took to the stage, Abigail Pocklington with The Swallow, Emily Bennett singing I Wonder as I Wander and Charlotte Bradley giving a charismatic performance of My Name is Talullah from the musical Bugsby Malone.
Michael Burns, who has made it through to the live audition stage of the TV show Britain’s Got Talent, showed how he achieved this with a guitar solo entitled Spin, the String Orchestra played I Dreamed a Dream and the Tollbar Band took the show to the interval with Winter Wonderland.
The second half undoubtedly belonged to the Tollbar Choir who, firstly with five male soloists, treated the audience to an excellent version of Mad World then later, this time with girl soloists, repeated the “wow” factor with One Moment in Time.
Between these preformances, saxophonist Charlotte Proctor played a moody piece entitled Lengthening Shadows, Vicky Gladwell brought a lovely clear voice to her rendering of Memories from the show Cats and the Paganini Trio of Bryony Webb, Charlotte Todd and Kathryn Queen showed how strings should be played with Pachalbel’s Canon.
Taking to concert to its finale were the Steel Pans with Calypso and the Theme from Friends, the versatile Emily Bennett with Sun and Moon from Miss Saigon and Ismail Shtewi playing Minuet.
Then it was again the turn of the Band to wind up the evening with You Raise Me Up, ending yet another successful concert that brought home to the audience just how much talent there is among Tollbar students.
