THE KING'S MEN - WEST ROAD CONCERT HALL
The King’s Men fired the Christmas music starting gun with a loud bang from canons, carols and festive pop songs. It was a delightful offering from start to finish and the near-full audience at the free Tuesday Lunchtime Concert cheered the young men with unbounded glee. These King’s College grads bounded on the West Road stage with such enthusiasm that it was hard to know who was the more pleased to be seen: audience or troupe. In four harmonious parts: high alto, deep bass, muscly baritone and top-notch tenors; they gave us 50 plus minutes of both tidings and joy.
With their colourful college scarves and formal dicky-bows they looked like they had stepped right in from a college ball. But it was we the audience who was going to have that ball. They began with the medieval hit made famous by Steeleye Span, ‘Gaudete’. These young men have such a lovely vocal balance and light up the space with both their voices and their eyes. With melodies forever shifting between the two parts, the Men gave all they had including some really humorous and confidently delivered verbal intros. First to speak was baritone Harry Grant who also had arranged some of the pieces.
We were mesmerized by Tomas Luis de Victoria’s gorgeous polyphonic ‘O Magnum Mysterium’. You cannot lick this Magnum. We had some fine English pastoral by Peter Warlock and that old Yuletide favourite, ‘In Dulci Jubilo’
On the lighter side, there was a very cheeky and child-in-all-of-us pleaser, an arrangement of ‘Jingle Bells’ that had the lads being clopping horses as well as tinkly sleighbells. We enjoyed an ambitious arrangement of ‘Let it Snow’, McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmas Time’ and as encore, my personal favourite of all pop 25 December ditties, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’. The ensemble really brought out the reflective melancholia of this charming chanson, a wistful hope for better times to come.
The 50 minutes passed in a flash and after a tumultuous round of applause the talented septet left the stage looking just as happy as when they had arrived. And so said all of us. They were jolly good fellows.
