David Thomas and the Roland Atelier
David Thomas
June 7th 2008
David Thomas
Concert Pictures
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Alan Frost eased us nice and gently in to the evening by doing the welcome spot - thanks for the music Alan! Which makes the title of the opening tune rather appropriate - This Is A Lovely Way To Start An Evening (from the film Higher & Higher) and accentuated by the piano, flute, guitar and theatre organ voices on this new instument in the Atelier range.
David had brought his video screen with him, which now depicted Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire and had us tapping our feet to Irving Berlin's Let's Face The Music And Dance - Dancing Cheek To Cheek - Stepping Out With My Baby & finally Tophats & Tails. A mellow harmonica - a new sound on the 900C - set the mood for The Sunshine Of Your Smile with the sun duly appearing at the back of the stage courtesy of Keith with David cheekily finishing off with a few bars of Last Of The Summerwine.
A Latin flavour to the evening with Besame Mucho - Perfidia - Something Stupid - It's Raining In My Heart & Raindrops Keep Feeling On My Head (was he trying to "drop" a hint about the weather?).
Atelier have brought proper drawbars back, giving David the chance to delight us with Deep Purple - Bring Me Sunshine - You Are My Only Sunshine - Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Desafinado - A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square & The Lady Is A Tramp - giving Keith plenty of colours to find to match these tunes!
Dispensing with the rhythm unit, we had a lovely rendition of Johann Pachabel's Canon In D before changing the mood completely with Chi Mai from the film The Mission from the early 80's, beautifully played with lots of strings. Set to a bright red background, a samba entitled Palmero and to finish off the first half the lively Black & White Rag from Potblack, recorded many moons ago by Winifred Atwell with Keith having no problems creating a matching background.
The good old brass band playing the DHOS march made for a lively opening after our refreshments before getting down to a more leisurely pace with piano and strings with a tune by former Beatle George Harrison Something (In The Way She Moves).
Programs like Strictly Come Dancing have done much to revive dancing up and down the country, so David helped things along with a quickstepping Hello Dolly, a waltzing Carameamine, got us to do the foxtrot to Too Young & Dream, adding Pasadena & Ain't She Sweet - gave us a bit of romance with the rumba My Foolish Heart before finishing with a disco number Daybreak.
James Last regularly makes an appearance in organists programs and so it was with David playing us Mornings At Seven & The Lonely Shepherd (Einsamer Hirte).
Herp Albert and his Tijuana Brass Band created a most unique sound, so what better tunes to play than So What's New? and Tijuana Taxi. It just goes to show that music allows you to play tunes to whatever rhythm or sounds you like. Yesterday was written some 20years after Glenn Miller passed away, but his sounds were brilliant for this tune.
David then finished his concert first by reading us the lyrics for Music Is My First Love and then playing us Music by John Miles.
Without the shadow of a doubt, David Thomas is one of the top players in this country, having given us an evening of beautifully played music. He was not going to get away without the traditional Basildon Encore, Bye Bye Blues was just the job.
Why not come along to a Basildon Keyboard Club Concert, you will be made very welcome, have a great evenings entertainment, a complimentary cup of tea or coffee with biscuits and of course experience the delights of live music played on top of the range electronic organs & keyboards by the best players.