Horsham Music Circle will be travelling the world when it welcomes the Kosmos Ensemble to launch its new concert series for its 83rd year.
Category
đč
FunTranscript
00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers, lovely as
00:06ever to speak to Meg Hamilton. Now you are heading for your debut with the Horsham Music
00:11Circle this September, first time you've played in Horsham, first time you've played with the
00:14Music Circle with Cosmos. Now Cosmos has been going a while and tell me what you have in mind
00:21for Horsham, what's the programme that you're going to be offering for the Music Circle?
00:25Hi, so great to be here and yes, very excited to be playing in Horsham and opening the 83rd
00:32season for them. We're going to play all kinds of music from across Eastern Europe and from
00:37around the world and very exciting news is that we will be giving our English premiere of the
00:44new tango that's been written for us by an Argentinian composer called Ariel Piedotti,
00:52and he's such a lovely man and he's very excited that we're playing his music in England as well.
00:59Give me a flavour of that piece then, what makes it special?
01:02Well actually I always wish that there were some dancers to dance with us, so perhaps
01:06someone in Horsham will dance to our piece because I feel like it needs dancers, it's very much
01:12inspired by dancing, being a tango, and it's got a lovely flavour with some different moods
01:19throughout. Absolutely, and just a word on the pick-up of Cosmos, in the line-up you have?
01:26We have Harriet McKenzie on violin and I play the viola and Milos Milivojevic
01:34on classical accordion. And what makes that a good combination? Well it's unique to start with,
01:39I don't think I know another combination like that. We do sometimes collaborate with others
01:44but we especially love performing just as the three of us, and we can play classical music
01:50but also we branch out to music from around the world, Eastern Europe to Asia
01:54to Argentina, Latin America, it's just we do whatever we like and make all our own arrangements
02:01and make fun with it. And Eastern Europe has always been massively important for you,
02:06hasn't it, down the years? For me personally, yes, because I've always loved Jewish music and
02:13that's led me to play in the Shekoi Klezmer band and I play a lot of Balkan music with them now,
02:18from Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Romania, ex-Yugoslavia, so I feel very lucky to have that
02:26as my inspiration and I often bring music from those areas to Cosmos, as does Milos because he's
02:32from Serbia, so we play a few Serbian pieces which we've arranged especially for Cosmos as well.
02:39Fantastic. And also I was born in Japan, so we occasionally play music from Japan and China
02:44across the other side of the world, Korea, these places. You clearly don't acknowledge boundaries,
02:48do you? No, yes, it's all about avoiding, well, crossing boundaries and including everybody.
02:56Fantastic, well it sounds lovely. Really nice to speak to you again, Meg, and I hope the debut at
03:01the Horsham Music Circle goes brilliantly. Thank you. Thanks very much, Phil, thank you.