DEVON's new professional Ten Tors Concert Orchestra will be making return visits to Okehampton, North Tawton and Tavistock as it completes its Music for the Millennium Project.
The series commences with a concert of Baroque Splendour at Fairplace Church, Okehampton on Saturday September 30. The guest soloist for this event is Early Music star soprano Nicki Kennedy. Nicki will be arriving directly from the Italian Festival de Barga to perform Vivaldi's beautiful motet 'Nulla in mundo pax sincera' and the exciting Bach cantata 'Jauchzett Gott'.
The Ten Tors concert orchestra principal trumpet, David Shead, will provide the Bach cantata's famous trumpet obligato. He will also perform Handel's Suite for Trumpet and Strings. The programme will also include works by Albinoni, Corelli and Boyce and John Stanley's Organ Concerto in D major performed by soloist John Holland.
St Peter's Church, North Tawton is the venue on Saturday November 25 when the orchestra will present a programme entitled Hope and Nature.
These themes are taken from the works performed by baritone soloist, Damian Thantrey. Hope is the desire expressed in the 'Song of Simeon' which Bach set in his sensitive cantata 'Ich habe genug'. The love of nature is found in the words of Robert Louise Stephenson which inspired Vaughan Williams' 'Songs of Travel'.
The Hope and Nature themes are also represented in Roger Bolton's New Dawn — Dartmoor Sunrise, which is the Ten Tors Concert Orchestra's Millennium Commission. Roger Bolton is best known as a television composer. The concert programme will also include Grieg's rustic Holberg suite and works by Handel.
Ten tors Orchestra is pleased to welcome back opera soprano Louise Cannon for the Christmas Gala concert at the Parish Church of St Eustachius Tavistock, on Saturday December 23.
Louise stunned the Tavistock audience last December with the sheer dramatic quality of her singing and this year she will delight with Violetta's areas from Act 1 of Verdi's opera La Traviata.
Louise and the orchestra will also be joined by the Ten Tors Choir for excerpts from Handel's Messiah and Christmas Carols.
There will also be the original chamber orchestra version of Roger Bolton's New Dawn — Dartmoor Sunrise which was premiered at Yelverton earlier this year.
The project is being supported by South Devon and Dartmoor Leader II, the South West of England Regional Development Agency, West Devon Borough Council, South Hams District Council and South West Arts.
Tickets are priced £8 (under 16s £4) and all concerts start at 7.30pm. For full details and concert series brochure phone 01566 783310.