Festive carols, Christmas favourites and great numbers by the ‘March King’ John Philip Sousa and Hoagy Carmichael for thrilling brass combos including four trumpets, four trombones, one horn and one tuba with percussion will be performed live by an twelve-person ensemble from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in an hour-long free concert on Monday 6 December, 1pm in the Marshes Shopping Centre, Dundalk.
This feast of festive and uplifting music conducted by Fergus O’Carroll may be just what a person needs the day before the Budget and in the midst of Christmas shopping.
Christmas favourites will range from Walking in the Air from The Snowman and traditional carols Joy to the World and the Coventry Carol to Sleigh Ride, Winter Wonderland and Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.
Other popular numbers will include Hoagy Carmichael’s great jazz standard Stardust, a song about a song about love and one of the most recorded songs of the twentieth century. Alongside this, Scarborough Fair, Three Brass Cats, composed by Chris Hazell for the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and a rousing Sousa medley, including Liberty Bell and Semper Fidelis.
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra players performing are trumpeters Graham Hastings, Killyan Bannister, Colm Byrne and Will Palmer; French Horn players Bethan Watkeys and Fergus O’Carroll; trombonists Jason Sinclair, Gavin Roche, Karl Ronan and Seán Fleming; tuba player Francis Magee, with Richard O’Donnell on percussion.
So, having to spend nothing other than your time, escape for an hour to the Marshes Shopping Centre and enjoy some of the best music arranged for brass and percussion forces in these free concerts with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra Brass Ensemble.
