The Victoria Hall’s address is Stirling Road, Dunblane, FK15 9EX, and its location almost opposite Dunblane Railway Station. There is limited parking directly across the road, more on the dual carriageway in the direction of the Fourways Roundabout and the most in Tesco’s car park across the railway line which is free for two hours on the upper level and £2 or so for longer stays on the lower level. The railway bridge from Tesco leads directly to the Victoria Hall and there are lifts up and down to avoid the steps.
This talk is a celebration of a high point in the evolution of light music: the era from the 1930s to the 1960s. Tin Pan Alley was then at its most productive with composers such as the Gerschwins, Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin producing musicals by the dozen and songs by the hundred. Berlin wrote 1200, Lennon and McCartney a mere 200. Radio stations broadcast the genre endlessly, orchestras and bands played it in dance halls, and singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra became international stars. The melodic quality of the songs was of the highest standard, their harmonic underpinnings were as complex as any and their lyrics poetic, witty, wistful and romantic.
Leslie and I would like to take you for a short journey through light music at its best by illustrating its forms, sophistication and appeal with slides and snippets played as a duo. We aim to show how the swing and balladic style evolved into a superlative art form and how it met its demise with the advent of beat music - a simpler formula, with an emphasis on rhythm rather than melody and harmony, that remains with us to this day.
The Great American Songbook is not a physical tome of scores and lyrics but an abstract, collective term for the idiom. While largely American and based on Broadway musicals, it embraces styles from outwith the USA, for instance the Brazilian Bossa Nova. We have lost much with the passing of the great show tunes, but at least the likes of My Fair Lady and Anything Goes continue to attract audiences to stage and screen productions. As a reminder of a unique period in musical history that we all experienced but which is now fast fading,
If you would like to attend or wish extra information, please email Peter Griffiths at pvgriffiths@icloud.com or phone 01786 823974.