The Merlin Music Society is the longest-established Concerts Society in Wales and is based at the Blake Theatre, Monmouth School.
Each year the Society promotes a series of seven concerts, and membership of the Society allows free entry to all seven events.
You can visit the Merlin website at www.merlinmusic.org
The Merlin 2010-11 Concerts Series can be found below.
MERLIN MUSIC 2010-2011
Merlin Music Monmouth offers seven concerts annually to members for a subscription fee payable at the start of the season. This year an eighth concert, given by the cabaret trio Fascinating Aida, is offered as a means of raising funds to secure the future of the Society. Merlin membership 2010-2011 costs
Single membership £77 excluding the Merlin Benefit Concert, £90 including the Merlin Benefit Concert
Double membership £145 excluding the Merlin Benefit Concert, £170 including the Merlin Benefit Concert
Student membership £20
Thursday 16th September 2010, 7.30pm
WELSH BAROQUE ORCHESTRA
Andrew Wilson-Dickson Director
Sian Winstanley Soprano
Simon Jones Violin
Free to Merlin members.£17.50, £10 to non-Merlin members.
ENTERTAINING GAINSBOROUGH
A concert of music by personal acquaintances of the most famous portrait painter of the day, including Karl Friedrich Abel, Johann Christian Bach, Thomas Linley the Younger, and Thomas Chilcot.
. . . bold period colour, which goes right down the line to take in a dynamic delivery in which everyone can be clearly heard.
South Wales Argus
Thursday 7th October 2010, 7.30pm
THE GETHIN LIDDIINGTON QUARTET
Gethin Liddington Trumpet, Sam Brown Drums
John Critchinson Piano
John Day Bass
Free to Merlin members.£17.50, £10 to non-Merlin members.
An evening of classic jazz, including tunes by Count Basie, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Cole Porter, with this well-known and supremely talented Welsh jazz musician and his quartet. Gethin Liddington studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama , and has performed with The Pasadena Roof Orchestra, Back to Basie, the Syd Lawrence Orchestra, Catrin Finch, Welsh National Opera, Katherine Jenkins and Aled Jones. John Critchinson spent many years working with Ronnie Scott, and John Day is Acker Bilk’s bassist. A truly national line-up.
Wednesday 3rd November 2010, 7.30pm
PRO-MUSICA TRIO
Robert Heard Violin, Louise Williams Viola, Richard Jenkinson ‘Cello
Free to Merlin members.
£17.50, £10 to non-Merlin members.
Trio Lennox Berkeley
Trio in G op 9 no 1 Beethoven
Divertimento Mozart
The three members of Pro-Musica Trio have been performing together for ten years. They are all soloists in their own right, but enjoy the kind of intimacy found in string chamber music. Two of the players retain strong links with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Robert Heard is the co-leader.
Thursday 9th December 2010, 7.30pm
FASCINATING AIDA
Merlin Benefit Concert
£20, £10
Dillie Keane, Adèle Anderson and Liza Pulman
The UK’s top female cabaret trio and recent New York Drama Desk award nominees, as well as past Perrier Award nominees, Fascinating Aida bring to Monmouth their particular brand of humour, sequins and song. Formed in 1983, the ladies have appeared in more than 100 theatres nationally and on countless radio shows including Stop the Week, People Like Us and Loose Ends.
Absolutely Fabulous meets Noel Coward, as sung by the Andrews Sisters.
The New York Post
Wednesday 26 January 2011, 7.30pm
ANA-MARIA VERA
Free to Merlin members.
£17.50, £10 to non-Merlin members.
Estampes Claude Debussy
Sonatine Maurice Ravel
Alborado del Gracioso Maurice Ravel
Sonata no 3 in B minor Fryderyk Chopin
From her professional début at eight, Ana-Maria has compelled audiences across the globe. Andean on her father’s side and Dutch on her mother’s, her playing is informed by a world-wide set of stylistic influences. A pupil of Leon Fleischer, her regular duo partners now include Steven Isserlis and Joshua Bell.
Hell hath no fury like Ana-Maria Vera playing Liszt . . .
The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday 15th February 2011, 7.30pm
JOGLARESA
Free to Merlin members.
£17.50, £10 to non-Merlin members.
Dancing in Tetuán
Ancient Judeo-Spanish songs connecting Cordoba to Calcutta via the Mahgreb.
Outstanding international performers from the spheres of mediæval music, world music and jazz, Joglaresa has a sound that is at once traditional and contemporary. Infectious enthusiasm is combined with peerless skill to produce performances full of Mediterranean passion. Just the thing for a cold February evening.
Compulsive rhythmic energy and luxuriantly ornamental solos . . .
The Daily Telegraph
Thursday 24th March 2011, 7.30pm
THE BRODOWSKI QUARTET
Free to Merlin members.
£17.50, £10 to non-Merlin members.
Quartett-Satz Franz Schubert
Quartet no. 1 Ralph Vaughan Williams
Death and the Maiden D810 Franz Schubert
Winners of the 2008 Royal Overseas League Chamber Music Competition, Park Lane Group Young Artists and current recipients of the Richard Carne Junior Fellowship at the Trinity College of Music, the Brodowski Quartet were described by The Times as ‘the new kids on the scene’. Their programme this evening includes Schubert’s well-known examples of the genre, but also a less-well-known quartet by Vaughan Williams, whose work outside the symphonic and choral spheres is now being recognised more widely.
The brilliant Brodowski Quartet is a group to watch out for
The Independent
Wednesday 4th May 2011, 7.30pm
FIONA MURPHY (MEZZO) AND SUSIE STRANDERS (PIANO)
Free to Merlin members.
£17.50, £10 to non-Merlin members.
The songs of Richard Strauss
A graduate of University College Dublin, Fiona has performed with Opera Ireland, Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Houston Grand Opera, Welsh National Opera and English National Opera, where she has recently given the role of Dorabella in their production of Cosi fan tutti. She was a finalist in the prestigious Hans Gabor International Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna, and Placido Domingo's Operalia Competition, and was the winner of the National Council Metropolitan Opera Mid Atlantic Region Competition in 2004. Fiona has also been a regular performer on RTÉ Radio’s Theatre Nights, Anna Livia radio Dublin, and has appeared on RTÉ's The Den and The Late Late Show. Fiona offers us an evening of Strauss’s matchless songs.