LATEST REVIEW
TRIBUTE TO AMERICA
Review of 11th July 2026 Concert - by Tim Tubbs
Scarborough never ceases to surprise. We’ve just failed the shortlist for Town of Culture, but unlike Lerwick or Pontypridd, we can boast a splendid 70-piece amateur symphony orchestra, who can deliver a cracking concert like tonight’s, led by a truly inspirational conductor, Shaun Matthew.
In his 20th season, Mr Matthew delivered a fine concert of 20th/21st century American music. Sponsored by Lady Ayckbourn, it was a revelation for a delighted audience who had escaped FIFA and braved the heat to enjoy what Mr Matthew rightly described as a "brave" and "intellectually curious" programme.
Opening with Margaret Bonds’ 1964 The Montgomery Variations, dedicated to the 1955 bus boycott, when Rosa Lewis took her famous seat on the segregated bus, the orchestra showed its paces in seven varied movements, based on the spiritual ‘I Want Jesus To Walk With Me’, from the stirringly decisive opening statement, through a wide range of beautifully expressed moods – worship, lament, protest, hope, including a bluesy trumpet solo from Richard Wood and a distressing, percussive church bombing.
Next up, Sacha Johnson was the dazzlingly virtuosic soloist for Nathan Daughtrey’s Concerto for Vibraphone and Orchestra, illuminating two Pablo Neruda poems with a rich mixture of misterioso and sudden rapturous flurries, giving a five-strong percussion section ample chance to shine. An impressionistic, exotic ambience suggested a creation myth in the closing “let there be light” cascades. We just went on applauding.
Ancestral Prayer from Gary Washington’s A Story Of People Called Black offset declamatory brass against soft timpani beats and mood-setting strings, to give a teasing glimpse of an ambitious work that describes the journey from Africa to America’s Deep South and ultimately to cotton-capital Manchester.
Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite followed, taking us into a pioneer Pennsylvania commissioned for Martha Graham’s famous 1944 ballet. This was the evening’s biggest challenge for the orchestra, I felt; but what a delight, and the 7th movement’s variations on the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts… wow.
Then, joy of joys, as an encore, Leonard Bernstein’s magnificent overture to the 1956 Broadway musical Candide, which the orchestra delivered with superb panache, leaving the audience exhilarated. This has to be up there with the theatre’s most exciting overtures: Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Kabalevsky’s Colas Breugnon, Styne’s Gypsy. Fab.
A challenging and varied programme, celebrating the truly great, melting-pot America that seems currently mislaid in MAGA Trumpery. This was the America of inclusion, diversity and community: European immigrants, Jews, gays, African Americans, Hispanics, Shakers, jazz, folk, the devout, pioneering, hard-working, real USA.
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