The orchestra on stage, with over 50 performers

Celebrating 10 years of music education

Child’s Play India Foundation held its 10th anniversary monsoon concert on 21 September at Menezes Braganza hall Panjim Goa to a packed, appreciative audience. This year’s monsoon concert had around fifty participants on stage, in addition to teachers and guest musicians. The performers were children as young as six, to adult learners who are part of the Child’s Play cello project.

Dr. Luis Dias conducting the orchestra

The concert programme featured a variety of pieces like works for beginner orchestra, solos and duets. Five flute students performed a three-part arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, while Irfan Simphigher played Joseph-Hector Fiocco’s dazzling Allegro.

Flute students playing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah

Orchestral works performed by the Camerata Child’s Play India included the Indian premiere of a concerto grosso by a Baroque composer, Johann Valentin Rathgeber (with children playing the solo parts); two movements (Rondeau and the famous Badinerie) of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orchestral Suite no. 2 in B minor; Vivaldi concerto in C major (RV 115) for strings and continuo; and the soulful Andante Festivo by Jean Sibelius.

Selwyn Menezes (violin) and Omar de Loiola Periera (guitar)

Noted duo Omar de Loiola Pereira (guitar) and Selwyn Menezes (violin) also entertained the audience with their special brand of music.

The Baridisi Quartet

The Baridisi Quartet (Jonathan Bager, flute; Laura Riccardi, violin; Luis Dias, viola; Gudrun Theodora Sigurdardottir, cello) performed the Mozart Flute Quartet no. 4 in A major, KV. 298. Guest musicians Jonathan Bager (flute, and also soloist in the Bach Badinerie) and Laura Riccardi who both came specially to celebrate Child’s Play’s milestone anniversary, performed two movements of a Telemann sonata and Japanese-inspired music by Carey Blyton, nephew of Enid Blyton and composer of incidental music for Doctor Who.

Jonathan Bager, flute and Laura Riccardi, violin