Another year gone... ;)

Today - is my birthday and yesterday my daughter and grandson took me out to a concert at the Dome in Brighton.  On the grounds of , it seems, that I never want to grow up :D  lets do something really different to celebrate.  We did and it was great! My daughter has great imagination for getting presents well matched to the recipient!

On the way, some street entertainment

It was Wallace & Grommit Musical Marvels.  We'd planned to have some lunch before, but the traffic going into Brighton was horrendous.  We found a great little shop selling Wraps etc and stopped there.  We then discovered there was a food market on selling loads of different types of cooked food!!  And a couple of colourful buildings too

Given we'd had a 'light' lunch and discovering a cup cake stall... well how could we pass by?

This was my choice :)

And then to the Dome:

 Not very good picture of the interior during the interval.

(I didn't have a camera with me - so all pics were with my phone camera... had to work out how to change the settings!!)

Music was provided by the Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon.

The first half was various pieces of music..

Fanfare for the Common Man - Copland
Danse Macabre - Saint-Saens
Czardas - Monti
The Infernal Dance of King Kastchei (from the Firebird) - Stravinsky
Clair de Lune, Debussy
The Magic Flute. Overture, Mozart
'Storm' from Four Sea Interludes - Birtten
My Concerto in Ee Lad - by Wallace ( an new piece of music :D  )
and then the Interval

The film of 'A Matter of Loaf and Death' was then shown and the orchestra played (Julian Nott) the musical accompaniment throughout the 35 minutes of the film - impressive.

Quite a youthful orchestra in the main and they played really well.

There were, obviously, many children in the audience and some quite young.  I was surprised that they were so very quiet during the first half and seemed to enjoy the music - albeit accompanied now and then by snippets of miscellaneous bits of Wallace & Grommit films.

The 2nd half, surprisingly, they were more restless.

It was a great day out and a wonderful surprise celebration of my birthday.  Thank you so much Sharon and J.... :D  Lovely memories!