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 | ASO Alfresco In The Gardens Adelaide Botanic Gardens, Fri 4 February Not mindful of the festival seating arrangements within the Botanic Gardens (d'oh!), my party and I arrived only ten minutes before the start. We were greeted by an entire hillside of people sitting in folding chairs, gorging on cheese, chicken and celery sticks, and washing it down with wine of both colours. Most agreed, it seemed, that the coolish low 20s was much better than the 40-degree temperature for the concert last year. Entering the scene from beside the marquee containing the ASO, I imagined conductor Martin Butler could be forgiven for feeling a bit like Jesus feeding a small but infinitely divisible bit of culture to the masses. Butler has had an amazingly catholic music career. Since winning a scholarship at the age of 11 and earning music degrees at Surrey University, he has been a keyboard player in a rock band, a violinist in the national theatre in Portugal, performed on Mediterranean cruises, was the conductor for the BSO (B for Burnside) for ten years, and has contributed greatly to music teaching in South Australia. Usually a violist for the ASO, they have thrown him the keys to the orchestra for this year's alfresco series. The night's selection was as eclectic as Butler's career and commenced, naturally, with a rousing overture, by Bellini. Later, Adelaide's own Catherine Lambert ascended the stage with her trademark flaming red hair and dressed in a gorgeous red gown to sing a Bacharach set with arrangements by Mike Kenny, who was sitting in the back paddock amongst the plebs with yours truly! Lambert seemed to coast through this set with shortened vowels and unfinished words. What followed was a zippy Zipoli with an arrangement by, guess who, Martin Butler, and a fascinating Rhapsody In Blue featuring ASO trumpeter, Martin Phillipson, thanks to Mike Kenny's arrangement. The second half commenced with Bugs Bunny - the fans can hear beaucoup of this on the 18th Feb in a whole night dedicated to the classic Looney Tune orchestrations. Lambert returned with a moving rendition of Bacharach's Anyone Who Had A Heart, arranged by Butler. Lambert mistakenly expected the audience to be in rapture at the end of Love Is In The Air when the arrangement spent too much time in the minor chord doldrums. After a rousing James Bond session, Lambert belted out a superb version of As Long As He Needs Me from the musical, 'Oliver.' The evening ended too soon with the Lord Of The Dance Suite. The substitution of SA for New York in an encore of 'New York New York' was not appreciated. What made the evening so intimate, even for me way-out-there was conductor's Martin Butler's tongue-in-cheek banter with the audience, his generosity in acknowledging his erstwhile-for-a-day colleagues in the orchestra, and Catherine Lambert's ease and disarming demeanor. I felt like I was sitting on the lawn facing their front porch. With the warm presentations of Butler's, Mike Kenny's and Bruce Stewart's nifty arrangements by Butler, Lambert and the orchestra, you didn't even notice the breeze through the trees.  | |
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