Concert Details
| Title: | Lunchtime Concert St Leonard's Church Seaford Phil Hopkins, Classical Chromatic Harmonica. Rosemary Kemp, Piano |
| Promoted by: | St. Leonard’s Church, Seaford |
| Time: | Saturday, 18 June 2022, at 1:00pm |
| Place: | St Leonard’s Church, Seaford |
| Description: | Phil Hopkins was a music scholar at King’s School Canterbury, graduated from Oxford University and studied chromatic harmonica with the great classical harmonica player, Tommy Reilly. In a thirty-eight year career as a professional musician playing percussion and/or harmonica, Phil has played for more than 120 London theatre productions spanning over 4500 performances across the West End, Royal National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe and Royal Shakespeare Company. Chromatic harmonica performances include: the BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta at St John Smith’s Square, and West End musicals such as The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Savoy Theatre), Sir Tim Rice’s From Here To Eternity (Shaftesbury Theatre), the London premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, and Gone With The Wind (New London Theatre). Phil has toured the USA many times with various artists including performances at Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and Symphony Hall, Boston. In 2018 he played the percussion part in the worldwide cinema broadcast of the Broadway production of The King and I from the London Palladium. He has recently been working on the Broadway production of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre. Other West End shows Phil has played for include The Phantom of the Opera, Blood Brothers, Miss Saigon, Matilda, Oklahoma!, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. Phil has been performance musical director for 21 productions at Shakespeare’s Globe. Phil has recorded for films such as Iris, Anonymous, The Merchant of Venice and Dance of the Steel Bars, as well as many TV productions including Only Fools and Horses, Wolf Hall and Allo Allo, along with a harmonica solo on This Morning with Phillip Schofield on live TV. Phil’s harmonica recording of the theme from the film Midnight Cowboy has had more than 127,000 plays on the streaming service Spotify. Phil has coached many actors to play harmonica for London theatre shows including The Night of the Iguana, Peter Pan, Girl from the North Country, and Assasins. Phil has played harmonica at many private parties for celebrities including Cameron Mackintosh, Victoria Wood and Sir Mark Rylance. Rosemary Kemp, formerly a scholarship pupil and prize winner at the Royal College of Music London, taught electronic and digital keyboard, piano and harpsichord in schools prior to her retirement in December 2017. She is a qualified secondary school teacher with post graduate qualifications in special needs. She contributed to A Common Approach for the Federation of Music Services and has been a moderator for the ABRSM Music Medals. She was Keyboard and Piano Co-ordinator for East Sussex Music Service and an instrumental teacher for Brighton and Hove Music and Arts, which is part of Brighton Dome and Brighton Festival. Rosemary set up the SNAPPS Special Needs Advocates Group based in Seaford East Sussex and ran it for twenty years prior to its closure in 2012. Rosemary played professionally prior to having a family and she has continued to play at a local level for festivals, clubs and theatre groups as well as in recitals more recently. |
| Tickets: | The Lunchtime Concert lasts approximately an hour has free admission with a retiring collection |
| Contact: | John Baker |
