Viva to end year in style

East Midlands-based professional orchestra Sinfonia Viva is to return to Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall for its latest annual New Year’s Eve Gala Concert.

Hollywood and Broadway will come to the city on Thursday, December 31, 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.

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From iconic film classics including the Oscar-winning soundtrack title music of John Williams’s Schindler’s List to the magnificence of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001: A Space Odyssey) the Gala 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 hugely popular anti-war musical of the same name, and music from Oliver Stone’s grittily poignant Academy Award winning 1986 movie Platoon.

The laid-back, 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.

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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.

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.

Ticket details are available by calling the box office on 0115 9895555.

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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.

“The earlier time has proved to be a winner with audiences over the past two years and the combination of lyrical melodies and rousing renditions is sure to put everyone in the celebration mood on this very special night of the year.”