Performance perspective: A Classical Interlude at Ribble Valley Jazz & Blues Festival, Clitheroe

The May Day weekend saw the annual Ribble Valley Jazz and Blues festival hit Clitheroe. An amazing lineup of musicians across 17 venues for the weekend. The festival is entirely volunteer run and they did an amazing job! This year, the festival organisers had a few branch-out events including A Classical Interlude - a morning of classical guitar and an afternoon of piano.

Members of the Clitheroe Piano Meetup, myself included, were invited to perform at the Interlude concerts. They were held in Clitheroe Library - so far, so familiar as this is the venue for the regular piano group. Multi instrumentalists John Hesketh and Ian Plested performed solo and duo guitar repertoire to a packed out room.

For the piano slot, there were 5 performers: John Hesketh, Nick Mahon, Margaret Plested, yours truly and Richard Dinsmore. The repertoire - what a selection! Somehow independently of each other we'd ended up focusing on quite a few French composers. After a more 'classical' start from John and jazz from Nick, Margaret included Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 in her section, followed by me with Erik Satie (Gnossiennes 1-4) and Benjamin Godard (Au Matin), followed by more Debussy (Reverie) and Poulenc (Improvisation No. 13 and Toccata from Trois Pieces) by Richard.

The room was pretty full and the audience very enthusiastic! Definitely helped with the nerves (although playing a familiar piano was another bonus). For me, I enjoy the Satie Gnossiennes so much that I was floating away on them whilst playing. Very nice.

Big congratulations to all the performers. Same time next year??

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