On the Saturday, Evening dinner was at 5:30pm, so i made my way to the main hall, and was greeted by a few people i had already met the previous day, and duly sat down, this time at a different table to the one the previous night, so it was apparent that the seating arrangement was first come first served and you sat where you wanted to.
As on the Friday I had a soup starter again and a delicious main course and sweet.
After the meal I had a short while before the evening concert in the main concert hall would start, so used this time to download some of the footage and photographs of the day onto another hard drive on the laptop.
60’s THEME NIGHT
Saturday Night was to be a themed night, and the theme for
this year was the 1960’s, all attendees where given the opportunity to dress up in anything they wanted, as long as the connection was the 1960’s,
and there was to be prizes for the best dressed – It was not compulsory to get dressed up, and I guess that’s why very few people
did. Apart from the team at Allens who were dressed up accordingly, only one other person did, (far right of this picture) so you guessed it, . . He simply one by default !!!
The evening concert was set to start at 7:30pm. As i am not one for arriving very early to get a premium seat at the front, I arrived at the concert hall about 10 minutes before it was about to start. Again the only seating was at the back on the last 3 rows, so I sat down next to someone called Ray, who was on his own and next to him was
Lee Mannering, also on his own. This was most unusual as I don’t personally know any other Lee’s and to be sitting next to another one was a surprise.
Tom Horton opened the evening concert for the first 30 minutes, if you don’t know who he is, just look on Youtube or the Allens website and you’ll soon discover he is a very accomplished organist, is extremely talented, and can turn his hands (and feet) to playing all styles of organ related music. Tom also has a website Tom Horton there you can find more information of who he is, what he does, and can even purchase a number of his CD’d that he has made, and i can vouch that they are very good and have a number of them myself. Tom Horton can also be found on our Who’s Who page
Click on CD to View or Buy
At 8:00 pm, Trevor Flunder General Manager of Allens Music, joined Tom for a short 10 minute session where they played a special 60’s Organ/Piano duet
NAME THAT TUNE (UK Game Show)
After about 10 minutes, It was then time for a bit of fun, and the room was divided into 2 teams (basically left and right side of room), and a representative from each team would be seated at the front opf the audience while Tom and Trevor played various short pieces of music to try and NAME THAT TUNE. As i say it was all good fun and everyone seamed to enjoy it.
There was an interval at about 8:40pm and time to go to the bar for a drink. I went on my own and was soon approached by Lee Mannering who joined me at the table I was sitting at, and we had a good chat and soon realised we had more in common than just our names. Although he did not play or own a Lowrey ( he has a Hammond XE-200) his wife had very kindly payed for him to come along to this event as a surprise gift.
We both returned to the concert hall for the final evening concert at 9:00pm, and this part was to be performed by Rosemary Bailey a lady from the USA who was making her Music Extravaganza debut. Rosemary can play all types of music genre, and was especially good at playing the organ in a very upbeat jazz style . . . not something some of the audience liked from what I could here and some of them left somewhat early. But I enjoyed listening to her and she is undoubtedly a very good Organ player.
What you need to understand is the majority of people in attendance seam to like, well known easy listening, theatre and Church Organ music they know what they like, and conversely anything other than that was simply not going to be their cup of tea . . . I guess you simply cannot please all of the people all of the time !