Sean Nero

The Mar­i­onettes Chorale chron­i­cled its four-and-a-half decades of mu­sic ex­cel­lence on Fri­day, tak­ing a jour­ney in­to sound and thrilling pa­trons at the pre­miere of its an­niver­sary con­cert held at Queen's Hall in St Ann's.

The event, ti­tled Cel­e­brat­ing 45 Years of Mu­si­cal Ex­cel­lence! was held un­der the di­rec­tion of Gret­ta Tay­lor. Mar­i­onettes re­turned to land­mark com­po­si­tions that helped put the choir on the map, along with oth­er con­tem­po­rary styles. The choir re­vis­it­ed ex­cerpts from Carl Orff's Carmi­na Bu­rana to its cred­it. Twen­ty years ago, the cast tack­led the piece from Bu­rana's reper­toire in its en­tire­ty, as well as Ezekiel Saw de Wheel arranged by Daw­son. Ezekiel Saw de Wheel was the spir­i­tu­al that con­tributed to the group win­ning the first of four in­ter­na­tion­al prizes.

Elab­o­rate cos­tum­ing as well as an ap­pro­pri­ate use of dance de­liv­ered by ex­po­nents from No­ble Dou­glas Dance Com­pa­ny Inc, was taste­ful­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the pre­sen­ta­tion. But when it was time to salute the year of its birth, Tay­lor and her cast chose to ho­n­our that pe­ri­od with Mighty Spar­row's Drunk and Dis­or­der­ly and Lord Blakie's Ara­bi­an Fes­ti­val.

As part of the cel­e­bra­tion, the choir wel­comed string play­ers from the Unit­ed King­dom, led by Ewan Camp­bell. To­geth­er with some of the choir's mu­si­cians, they formed the an­niver­sary or­ches­tra and height­ened the qual­i­ty ac­com­pa­ni­ment. The chorale al­so paid trib­ute to the late King of Pop with Heal The World, which left pa­trons rapt on a night where mu­sic ex­cel­lence was cel­e­brat­ed.