(Vera Dubin, founder
of Friends of Music)
Highly successful occasion for Friends of Music and appropriate
tribute to Vera Dubin. (Review by Michael Green)
Every year the Friends of Music organisation stages a
special concert to raise funds for Beth Shalom (Abode of Peace), the Jewish
retirement home on the Durban Berea.
This year the Sunday afternoon concert at the Durban Jewish
Centre was presented as a tribute to Dr Vera Dubin, who founded the Friends of
Music 33 years ago, who is still the very active chairman, and who will shortly
celebrate her 90th birthday.
A programme of light music and a variety of accomplished
performers attracted an exceptionally large audience, about 500 people.
About 30 members of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra appeared
in the unusual role of pop musicians, playing mainly items from American films
and stage shows to appreciative listeners.
The concert opened in most unusual fashion, seven lively
pieces played by a marimba band, the marimba being a wooden instrument that
resembles a xylophone. The players, about 20 of them at several marimbas, were
children from the Curro school at Hillcrest. Their flying mallets and
uninhibited zest created a happy atmosphere that was greatly enjoyed by the
audience and which was maintained throughout the concert.
Three of Durban’s best-known instrumentalists, Elena
Kerimova (violin), Boris Kerimov (cello) and Liezl-Maret Jacobs (piano), then
played five tuneful items that included the Russian folk song Black Eyes, a Spanish Serenade by
Glazunov and two pieces by the Romanian composer Grigoras Dinicu.
This was followed by a novelty, Many Hands On One Piano (six to be exact), with Liezl-Maret Jacobs,
Jacques Heyns and Bobbie Mills at one keyboard. It looked a little crowded, but
without colliding they skilfully performed arrangements of well-known music by
Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Rachmaninov.
Something completely different was provided by Platform
Jazz, a group formed by Cathy Peacock, a trumpeter with the KZNPO, in 1990. The
seven players – trumpet, clarinet, trombone, saxophone, piano, double bass and
drums - had the audience humming, clapping and tapping as they performed such
old favourites as Twelfth Street Rag, In
the Mood, and I’ve Got You Under My
Skin.
The concert as a whole was a highly successful occasion for the
Friends of Music and an appropriate tribute to Vera Dubin. - Michael Green
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