Join ‘Mr New Year’s Eve’ for gala concert

Hollywood and Broadway will come to the city centre venue as the early evening concert transports the audience to the red carpet world of box-office smash musicals, all-time favourite movie themes and classic film songs.

Principal guest conductor Nicholas Kok will make a welcome return and will be joined by pianist Ian Buckle as well as talented young members of the Derby-

based Big Adventures Youth Theatre Company Choir.

From iconic film classics including the Oscar-winning soundtrack title music by John Williams’s Schindler’s List to the magnificence of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) the concert will be a veritable hit parade of songs and tunes that made history on the big screen and on stage.

The rich back catalogue of music in the programme reads like a ‘who’s who’ of stage and screen triumphs.

These include George Gershwin’s fabulous Strike Up The Band overture from the award-winning musical of the same name, and music from Oliver Stone’s grittily poignant Academy Award winning 1986 movie Platoon.

The laidback, ascending slide on clarinet introduces Gershwin’s jazz-classical fusion Rhapsody in Blue. This legendary work featured in movies including

Woody Allen’s Manhattan and the 2013 remake of The Great Gatsby, plus countless television adverts.

After the interval, Viva will perform Addinsell’s mighty Warsaw Concerto from the 1941 box-office hit Dangerous Moonlight.

Bringing extra sparkle, Big Adventures Youth Theatre Company Choir joins the orchestra to perform a selection of seminal vocal smash hits. These include Harry Warren’s emblematic title song Lullaby of Broadway from the Doris Day 1951 film musical of the same name plus Cole Porter’s fabulous Another Op’nin’, Another Show, the timeless tune from the massive 1948 hit Broadway musical Kiss Me, Kate.

There is also the punchy There’s No Business Like Show Business, made popular by Ethel Merman’s defining rendition in the 1950 film version of Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun.

The programme finishes with a selection of popular, end-of-year, celebratory music including Suppe’s delightful operatic sensation the Light Cavalry Overture as well as three further ‘hits’ from Waltz King Johann Strauss II – the elegant Emperor Waltz, the overture from his comic operetta The Gypsy Baron, and the whirlwind musical roustabout that is the Thunder and Lightning Polka.

With the popular 6pm start and 8.15pm finish there is then plenty of time for the audience to continue the celebrations and see in the New Year.

Nicholas Kok introduces each piece and is fondly known by regular concertgoers as Mr New Year’s Eve.

He said: “We have put together an evening that we think is a perfect blend of much loved classics providing a programme which really can be described as music for everyone.”

Call the box office at the venue for ticket availability on 0115 9895555 or you can go to www.trch.co.uk