Tootsall

I hate to be a bore with this... but the BBC radio 2 website as of about, oh three hours ago is featuring a concert with Lionel Ritchie and the BBC Orchestra. Who happens to be playing in that group? None other than Noel Langley on 1st.

Listen to what happens when Lionel leaves the orchestra (and notably Noel) hanging onto a double something-or-other for 30 seconds or so!

Great playing, Noel.

Just get through the BBC.CO.UK website to "radio" and then to "Radio two" and then to "Friday Night with Lionel Ritchie". Great stuff to listen to while cruising the net.

eclipse trumpets

Hi Toots

I listened to the concert last night and it was great!

I know the part you mean , when Lionel's band forget that the trumpeter is not plugged into the mains electric and expect him to just carry on with that note for 5 minutes or so
Mind you i was proud of Noel to hold it that long!!! I think lionel was too

I think the mix could have been better so we could have heard a lot more of the trumpets, but i still turned it up loud and annoyed my pregnant wife for almost an hour

Regards

Leigh

lonelyangel

If you look really closely you can see my gleaming head in the back row. :)
I am in the centre of the three trumpets and you can see the gold bell of my heavy medium red eclipse which I used for the concert.
I think the sound gets better as the concert progresses - which is normal because these dates are recorded and mixed live. We had one 3 hour rehearsal on the afternoon of the gig at which we had time to play each number once and look at a couple of corners - so it was quite a high pressure gig. Lionel did not attend the whole rehearsal - just sang a couple of songs right at the end. I think that is why he was so blown away by the sound of the orchestra - he had never heard us play most of the songs.

It also explains what happened over that last note on Dancing on the Ceiling. In the rehearsal the fermater lasted about 3 or 4 seconds. On the gig it was nearly 25 seconds long - so I was really taken by surprise!

Mr Richie made a point of apologisisng to me in person after the show - which was very decent of him and shows that he is a real musician with an understanding and apreciation of the efforts that the whole orchestra was making to bring the music to life.

It was a great gig, fantastic songs and a world class artist - a lot of fun!