EVERYBODY’S doing it – showing the film of
The Snowman with an orchestra playing live music. The Hallé have it
on December 22 and 23 (twice each day) at the Bridgewater Hall, alongside a new
piece by Steve Pickett for audience and orchestra called Dinosaurumpus.
And, in many other places in the north of
England, The Snowman will be shown by Carrot Productions, run by Glossop-based freelance
bassoonist Rachel Whibley (managing director) and BBC Philharmonic double bass
player Daniel Whibley (artistic director and presenter).
Last year they showed it to over 15,000
people at 27 venues. This time it’s got even bigger, with 33 performances
including Halifax, Southport, Chester, Blackpool, Sheffield, Bolton (Victoria
Hall, December 15), Hull, Bradford and Warrington (Parr Hall, December 20),
school shows in Buxton, Derby, Chesterfield, Burton-on-Trent and Matlock, plus
a special free one for the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital on Sunday
December 6. Conductor will be Steve Magee.
In the Carrot Productions’ tour of the film
there’s an extra novelty – one by a Manchester
musician. He’s Tom Scott, brother of Bridgewater Hall resident organist Jonathan
Scott, and a visual artist as well as a musical one (he studied at the Royal
Northern College of Music and Manchester
University and is now a
lecturer as well as piano soloist).
Tom has created an animated film to
Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. He has already transformed The Carnival Of The
Animals in the same way, and his animations have been used in classrooms and
live concerts all over the world.
Tom says: “In the Nutcracker Suite,
most movements represent different characters and objects. So, as the Chinese
Dance has lots of pizzicato string sounds I imagined this could be tea pickers
plucking tea leaves; and the tambourine in the Arabian Dance became the hiss of
a snake, while the musical flourishes in the March became decorations flying up
into the air and landing on a Christmas tree.
“There are also instruments played by the
animated characters which represent the actual instruments played by the
orchestra.”
The Scott brothers are a remarkable pair.
Each has a career of his own, and they also appear as The Scott Brothers Duo.
Born in Manchester,
they studied at Chetham’s and the RNCM. Both were brass players, too – Tom did
trumpet as his second study at Chet’s, and Jonathan played trombone.
There’s a film on YouTube about the making
of the Nutcracker Suite film – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJQ6ebA1QB8
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