BSO On Your Doorstep: Ottery St Mary – Let’s Dance: From Baroque to Bowie

Sweet Upbraiding

I had the pleasure last night of seeing the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s brass octet playing at St Mary’s Church in Ottery St Mary. This is a wonderful venue both in its beauty and acoustics, the sound of horns making resonant impact from the latter and also gracing the former with some glorious sweet music.

The BSO On Your Doorstep: Ottery St Mary – Let’s Dance: From Baroque to Bowie is supported by Villages in Action who exist to ‘bring theatre, music, dance, circus, spoken word, storytelling, puppetry and poetry from around the world to our rural communities’, and our BSO community visitation in the town of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s birth played an eclectic set in the place which was once that young boy’s actual playground.

I enjoyed everything performed. And though a Bowie interpretation didn’t transpire (yes, I had expected and was a little disappointed!) the folk songs covered were the ‘sweet music’ I mentioned earlier, and ample compensation. There were two Welsh folk songs in the set, the first of which STC may well have purred poetically ‘It pours such sweet upbraiding’, but my favourite of the night was a sensuous Scarborough Fair.