Worthing Symphony Orchestra will be setting the New Year up perfectly with their gloriously upbeat New Year concert in the Assembly Hall, Worthing on Sunday, January 7 at 2.45pm.
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00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always really
00:06 lovely to speak to John Gibbons of Worthing Symphony Orchestra. Now John, you are a January
00:12 fan and most of us aren't, and one of the reasons you are a fan of that wretched month
00:16 of January is the V&A's concert which you offer in Worthing. And as you're saying, it's
00:21 always one of the most uplifting concerts of the year. It's Assembly Hall, Worthing
00:25 Year Concert, Sunday January 7th at 2.45pm. What makes it so special, this concert?
00:34 I think what makes it special is that it comes at the very end of the whole holiday season.
00:40 So it's not crammed on to when the Viennese New Year is on the 1st of January when people
00:45 sit at home and watch the Viennese concert, but it's a whole six, seven days later. It's
00:51 like crowning off the end of the whole holiday period. And what I love about it is that everybody
00:57 walks out the room on an absolute high, they're foot tapping, the music's all joyous, you
01:03 know it's going to be joyous. And it just sets you up and however miserable the weather
01:09 is as you walk out, you know that things can only get better because actually spring is
01:15 round the corner. If you look at the trees, the trees are beginning just to bud underneath
01:19 all the cold, the bulbs are going to be coming up underneath the snow, and the days are getting
01:24 longer.
01:25 So you're sitting there thinking, oh dear Christmas is over, you're thinking ahead to
01:29 the optimism of spring with this concert.
01:31 Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, life is so important for us.
01:35 The defining characteristic of the music is tunefulness. What do you mean by that?
01:40 Well, there's certain sequences that we all played every year, like the Blue Danube Waltz.
01:45 And everybody knows the tunes, you can almost hear the audience humming along as you play
01:49 the tunes and everything. And as human beings, I think the most important thing we love is
01:53 tunes. So if you've got tunes that people know well and everything, it's a really good
01:57 feel good factor. And then I can conjure up there are, I don't know, there'll be two to
02:03 three thousand pieces that you can choose from for this particular concert that fit
02:07 into the Viennese genre. It was a phenomenal compositional school really. And I've managed
02:14 to acquire this year a lot more music for it, which means that I've got some more interesting
02:20 Waltz sequences that we've not heard for some time, which will be in the programme. And
02:24 there's always exciting little polkas and marches that you can put in that just sort
02:29 of tickle, just to spark the imagination for everybody.
02:34 So there's certain ones around, so it's staples that you must include, but then you can write
02:38 the changes.
02:39 Yeah. So there'll be Thunder and Lightning polka, there'll be the Bradecki March, which
02:43 everyone enjoys joining in with, but there'll be some really unusual ones. Last year we
02:48 did Village Swallows for the first time for a very, very long time, which was a really
02:52 beautiful Waltz sequence. And the Waltz sequences are not just, they vary so much, they're like
02:59 little orchestral tone poems. There's so many different moods within the Waltz sequences.
03:04 Oh, that's lovely. You'll never forget the January is a terrible month, but you're very
03:10 prosperous. It sounds great. And the wider context is that times are good for the orchestra,
03:15 despite the cost of living, you're doing well.
03:20 We survived and we're going and we're still there, we're still putting on lots of concerts.
03:25 And it's a joy to continually meet new people coming along to the concerts, saying this
03:31 is the first time I've ever been to a Worthing concert. And wow, I didn't know that we had
03:35 this amazing orchestra on our doorstep. And it's so nice for people just to be able to
03:40 drive, what, 10, 15 minutes, go to the Assembly Hall, fantastic acoustics of the Assembly
03:46 Hall, listen to a concert and be home within 15, 20 minutes. You don't have to go to London
03:51 in order to hear great orchestral music.
03:53 And as we were saying just now, the really crucial thing is that you're actually having
03:58 it there live in front of you. And the difference that makes is just incalculable, isn't it?
04:04 Yeah, and I think in music, it's actually people forget maybe the difference between
04:11 hearing it in your living room, wonderful sound system, the glass of wine, but it's
04:16 not the same collective experience. I always relate it to football. When I go and watch
04:20 my football team and you're losing the game 1-0 and you're going into extra time and then
04:25 suddenly you score two goals and win.
04:27 And you have to be there.
04:29 You cannot encapsulate that feeling of all the people in the ground going, "I can't
04:34 believe it." It's something you feel. It's not just the noise, the sheer exuberance.
04:39 And in a lesser way, any arts thing that you go to, if you go to the theatre, if you go
04:44 to a concert, that is what you're actually experiencing. It's not just the music, it's
04:50 actually the whole ambience of the whole event that actually makes it special. And I think
04:55 a lot of our concerts become memories that you sit and remember for many, many decades.
05:02 You don't forget it. And I think that's what coming to concerts is about. It's building
05:06 your life experiences that you remember. I go to visit my mum in a care home and we
05:11 can still talk about concerts that we remember from when I was a kid. The time I played
05:17 Samson's Organ Symphony at Southampton Guild Hall at the age of 10. And I was in charge
05:22 of the organ and it got a cipher. So it was ciphers when a note gets stuck on the organ
05:27 and it's just playing there. And it was a G sharp. And I was going to come in in the
05:30 famous moment and the sound was on a big C major chord, looking around at my parents
05:35 in panic. I can't stop it. I've done everything I'm meant to do, turn the organ off, turn
05:38 it back on again. But no, it's stuck. Well, that would stay with you, wouldn't it, really?
05:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And those sort of memories. But that is exactly what a live concert is.
05:46 It gives you memories that you remember. Fantastic. Well, that sounds a really terrific
05:51 prospect. Uplifting for January. Just perfect. And it's the New Year concert from Worthing
05:55 Symphony Orchestra, the Assembly Hall, Worthing, Sunday, January the 7th at 2.45pm. John, always
06:02 great to speak to you. Thank you ever so much. Great. Thanks so much, Bill.
06:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]