Gala Concert: A Carnival of Rhythm! Sir James Galway performs with Conductor Rafael Payare and the Ulster Orchestra.

Friday, 22 September 2017 at 7:45pm

Venue: Belfast Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Purchase tickets HERE.

The 2017/18 Ulster Orchestra Season has a special start as part of Culture Night Belfast, bringing an extravaganza of dance music from around the world. It celebrates music from both the Old and New World, in particular the Latin American rhythms that are part of the heritage of our Music Director, Rafael Payare. From the insistent rhythmic pulse of Ravel’s Bolero to the fiery flamenco in Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, this programme is rich with the heat and light of Spain and Latin America.

Ulster Orchestra Artist Laureate Sir James Galway returns to perform music closer to home. Riverdance composer Bill Whelan’s flute concerto Linen and Lace was written for Sir James as soloist and is in Whelan’s trademark style, drawn from the rhythms of Irish dance.

And to open the concert, Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances. Orchestral re-workings of the music from West Side Story, these dances take us from the deserted street-music from the beginning of the musical to rumble and disaster at the story’s end.  The music races along in a flurry of jazz and dance rhythms from an epic percussion section, every type of syncopation in the book and even the vocal talents of the Orchestra’s musicians. Mambo!