I had the good fortune of attending a concert in our local parish church by accordion maestro Thom Hardaker - Look him up on you tube. You will not be disappointed :-)

Started off quite sedately with a Bach Toccata and Fuege followed by a suite in 3 parts by Franck Angelis. Both classical but very different. The rest of the set included The Carnival of Venice and concluded with Tchaikovsky's everyone's a fruit and nut(cracker) case ;-)

Raffle and wine were the highlight of the intermission. Wine was included in the price and was quite pleasant. Should have been as it was supplied by the landlady of my local pub, who also happens to be Thom's Mum:-) I didn't win anything in the raffle though but people immediately in from and behind did. Isn't that annoying... :-P

Second half started with a Russian spring song that Thom learned during his time doing an MA at the Rimsky-Korsakov academy in St Petersberg. The rest of the half was a lot wilder and more varied than the first including compositions by Scotland's Tom Alexander and Phil Cunningham as well as more folk music from Russia and a very lively Finnish Polka. Jazz was well represented with Duke Ellingtion's signature 'Take the A train'. A sample of Thom's final exam piece was from 'The Barber of Seville' and the encore was the Trumpet Hornpipe (Captain Pugwash!) followed by the 50's accordion classic 'Magic Fingers'.

One final thing I must mention is Thom's piece of electronic wizardry, the Roland accordion. Not only did he play a Celtic medley on it giving the sounds of bagpipes, fiddles and a host of other things but at one point he was playing a tango on his standard accordion while the Roland was sat on a chair by itself accompanying him :-)

All in all a splendid night and quite possibly the fullest the church has been for a long time!