Gisborne Orchestra & Choral Society presents festive concert with trumpeter Maurice Reid

Guest trumpeter Maurice Reid will perform at the Gisborne Choral Society and Orchestra's upcoming Trumpets and Joy concert at St Andrew's Church.

“Christmas comes but once a year” goes the old rhyme ... but not in 2024.

Gisborne Choral Society is turning on a bumper early treat on November 10 in combination with the Gisborne Orchestra and guest trumpeter Maurice Reid from Whakatāne.

Tucked among the lollipops in the Trumpets and Joy stocking will be a Fantasia on Christmas Carols by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a baroque trumpet concerto by Giuseppe Torelli and a cantata for Christmas Day by JS Bach.

“This work has remained one of my favourites since I, along with future wife Catherine Macdonald, was in the Dorian Singers in Auckland in the 1970s,” conductor Gavin Maclean said.

“We last performed it in Gisborne in 1994. It combines choir and orchestra in a frenzy of joy, albeit a carefully constructed one, crowned by three trumpets - guest Maurice Reid and locals Dean Middleton and Per Elzen. A calm duet between the two major movements will be sung by Catherine Macdonald and Serena Foster, with Susan St John on solo flute.”

With the text Glory to God in the Highest, this is but one of Bach’s more than 200 sacred cantatas, and was later incorporated in his great masterpiece - the Mass in B Minor.

Other short pieces, all in uplifting mood, include choruses, trumpets and a double duo for pianists.

Reid is an accomplished musician. He plays with orchestras, brass bands and big bands, but particularly likes the high Baroque repertoire on D trumpet and piccolo trumpet.

He has been playing solos for Handel’s Messiah, Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man and other challenging trumpet parts with choirs all around the central North Island for many years.

The first Messiah he played solo trumpet for was with Gisborne Civic Orchestra with the choral society, under Roy Tankersley, in 1989.

A recent spell in Melbourne saw him play principal trumpet with the Preston Symphony Orchestra for five years, but he is now back in Whakatāne, where he plays with Eastern Bay of Plenty Brass.

Trumpets and Joy is on Sunday, November 10, at St Andrew’s Church in Cobden St from 2pm. Cost $20 waged, $10 unwaged.

Gisborne Choral Society and Gisborne Orchestra in rehearsal at St Andrew's Church for the Trumpets and Joy concert on November 10. Musical director Gavin Maclean conducts the rehearsal with Coralie Hunter at the harpsichord (far right).