Concert Review 20th August 2018 – Mike Hall
It was the last concert of the summer for the year and we welcomed Mike Hall who opened the evening with a Jungle Book medley. We had to agree it was some years since he had played for us, a fact that he didn’t fail to point out. Mike is an advocate of the Orla range of Instruments and with him he brought two, the GT8000 and a smaller portable keyboard the KX10. During the evening he made a point of talking about these instruments and their abilities. No doubt instruments enthusiasts appreciated the detail. His music, as we would expect included variety of style and form, this of course means you cannot please all the people all of the time. Overall it was a good evening’s entertainment. We listened to the music he produced and when Mike offered to play whichever instrument, we the audience preferred, it was obvious most of us were quite surprised by what we were hearing from the smaller portable KX10, an impressive instrument, It was called for time and again. At least two members of the audience have since gone looking for one themselves.
Some of Mike’s music included. A jungle book medley, Take a chance on love, A big Band Gershwin Medley, a ‘Pipe’ organ medley, Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree’ ‘Eye level’ from Van der Valk, ‘Thinking about the things we used to do’, Smokey and the bandit – eastbound and down, The Candy man, The Kyle of lochalsh, Psalm 23, Dream – Johnny Mercer, Mack & Mabel – I won’t send roses, 76 Trombones in the hit parade, A rock and role medley, The Odd couple.
