Bones Apart
Church of St John the Baptist
Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire
2nd November

For some years now, the Red Kite series of recitals has brought chamber music to the concert-going public of northeast Bedfordshire.  Recent performers have included wind quintets, piano trios, baroque recorder groups and solo percussionists.  

For the closing concert of the 2025 season, entitled ‘Wonder Women’, the all-female trombone quartet Bones Apart paid a visit to the compact surroundings of Cockayne Hatley’s Parish Church, a venue described (quite correctly) by one as being, ‘in the middle of nowhere’.

However, despite its rural location, a large audience turned out to hear a programme of music, mostly by female composers, spanning the 12th to 20th centuries, and journeying from central, southern and northern Europe to south and north America.

Exactly right

The group (on this occasion, Helen Vollam, Becky Smith, Meggie Murphy, deputising for Jayne Murrill and Sarah Williams) opened with the plainsong ‘O Quam Mirabilis Est’  (Hildegard von Bingen), the antiphonal nature of the piece working very well in such an intimate space with exactly the right acoustics. 

The latter included ‘Sinnerman’  (Nina Simone), into which Bach’s ‘Prelude in C minor’  had been cleverly woven, the German master having exerted a strong influence on Simone in the days when she had aspirations as a classical concert pianist.

Bones Apart assembled centre stage for the rest of the programme.  The baroque period was represented by the ‘Sant Alessio Suite’  of Camilla de Rossi, there were some French chansons by Nadia and Lili Boulanger (including an unexpectedly jaunty ‘Cortege’) and some 20th century popular music. 

The latter included ‘Sinnerman’  (Nina Simone), into which Bach’s ‘Prelude in C minor’  had been cleverly woven, the German master having exerted a strong influence on Simone in the days when she had aspirations as a classical concert pianist.

Dark and brooding

The grit in the oyster was provided by ‘Torc’  (Helen Vollam), a rather dark and brooding portrait of Boudica, Queen of the Iceni, in which the many dissonances were complemented with a variety of extended techniques, at various times mimicking the sounds of a distant horn, a Gaelic flute and a Roman carnyx, before our heroine disappears in a puff of wind, as it were.

The grit in the oyster was provided by ‘Torc’  (Helen Vollam), a rather dark and brooding portrait of Boudica, Queen of the Iceni,

The programme was completed with Latin-American music by the Brazilian Chiquinha Gonzaga, a raunchy ‘Blues Melba’  by Melba Liston and Joni Mitchell’s 1968 classic ‘Both Sides Now’.  The proceedings closed with ‘Secret Love’  and ‘Windy City’  (Sammy Fain) from the musical Calamity Jane.

The group returned to the stage for one more number from the musical ‘Calamity Jane’,  ‘The Deadwood Stage’  (or the ‘dead chops stage’, as Helen Vollam wryly renamed it), in which the piccolo obligato from Sousa’s ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’  (played on tenor trombone) put in an appearance over the main melody for no obvious reason – but was fun!

Alec Gallagher