NYGE Course: Easter 2007
Students gathered on the Thursday before Easter in Quorn, Leicestershire. For the next few days they were drilled and coached by our ever popular and exuberant Musical Director, Gerald Garcia. On the Easter Sunday the 26 young players were joined by Victoria Walker (cello) and the Eden/Stell Duo. Then On Easter Monday NYGE performed to a packed village hall in Quorn and received deserved acclaim for a programme that included Roundelay by Stephen Dodgson, for Cello and Guitar Orchestra, and the Lorca Concerto by Gerald Garcia, for Two Guitars and Guitar Orchestra. There were also works by Montes and Andrew York, a Gary Ryan guitar duet and a very humourous piece of music theatre performed by Victoria about a barber with a worrying scissor twitch! On Tuesday 11th April NYGE and the soloists headed south for a concert at the Bolivar Hall, where a repeat programme met with a warm reception from the London audience.
Key to the success here, as has so often been the case, were two people: the Musical Director and the NYGE Administrator. Gerald Garcia's musicianship as a conductor, composer and guitarist are of the highest standards and he used them all to great effect. His own guitar concerto for two guitars is a formidable piece of writing and the musical focus and weight are targetted in a second movement that is as lyrical as it is tightly conceived. But his rapport with his players and the strong affection in which he is held by all in NYGE elicited a warmth of playing which well suited all the pieces perfomed over Easter. NYGE is fortunate to have found a man who "ticks so many boxes" in so many ways and EGTA extends its heartfelt thanks to him for a unique and essential contribution to the life of NYGE.
Chris Susans is also an accomplished player and conductor, and was NYGE's first Musical Director, but his recent work for NYGE has been "behind the scenes" and has been criticial in knitting together all the strands which culminate in such successful courses. He handles all with a great delicateness of phrase and although students are left in no doubt as to where the lines are, he runs things with a fatherly kindness and his trust in his young charges is nearly always returned by a course where personal relations are maintained at their most cordial. It is with great sadness that EGTA have learned that Chris is standing down at the end of 2007. He has, almost single-handedly, set the organisational bar extremely high and it will be a highly motivated and committed individual who will be able to take over for the future.