MUSIC+

Classical Music
Cecily Hughes Concert Goers group is going to meet at 2pm on Monday 27 April in the Civic Centre in preparation for a forthcoming concert. This time the talk will be given by Chris Weeks who lectures on music for DACE. The cost will be £2 as usual and the fact that it is held in the Council Chamber of the previous West Glamorgan administration is recompense enough! To judge from earlier presentations which I have attended it will amply reward the time spent by improving your enjoyment of the event.

The concert itself is by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the Brangwyn Hall for £11.50 to £14.50 at 7.30pm Saturday 9 May, under Tadaaki Otaka. They will play Beethoven's lesser played Symphony 4, perhaps my favourite after the ninth, and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with Birgit Remmert and Jon Dasak as mezzo soprano and tenor soloists.

Mumbles Jazz and Blues Festival fills the period in between the above talk and Brangwyn concert with four days and 18 concerts of different genres. My particular interest is in the jazz side of this combination and I have pencilled in the two concerts featuring Mornington Locket on saxophone. He visits Jazzland, St James Crescent at least once a year and always excites with his wonderful bebop style and slow ballads. He worked for many years with Ronnie Scott. The first for £12 at 8pm on Saturday 2 May with his quartet including Laurence Cottle, who hails from Mumbles. The second for £8 at 1pm on Sunday 3 May with Dave Cottle trio, the fine rhythm section who back visiting professional soloists weekly at Jazzlands, featuring Morninton Locket and well known British jazz singer Tina May. Another attractive concert is the opening one one for £12 at 8pm Friday 1 May by the Snake Davis Band which should get the festival off to a 'funky' start.

If your interest is on the Blues side then the last for £10 at 8pm on Monday 4 May by Brian Breeze's local Rhythm and Blues Band catches my eye.

Many of the other Jazz or Blues concerts cost £4 or £6. Tickets can be purchased from The Mumbles Tourist and Information Centre 01792 361302 or from Swansea Jazzland on 07802 912789. Doors open 45 minutes before the concerts so be early to get the best seats. Given the demise of internationally known Brecon Jazz after 25 wonderful years there is a big opportunity to build something really important at Mumbles. Its success depends on your support.

U3A Network Jazz Study Day at Narberth on Wednesday 20 May features a concert by the Ken Collier Legacy New Orleans Jazz Band. When I was a student in London in the mid fifties Trad Jazz, sophisticated Coffee Shops, Lonnie Donegan's skiffle and students parading with T-Chest Bass and washboard, were all the rage. My particular favourite was Humphrey Lyttelton who performed every week at the newly opened 100 Club in Oxford Street. His idol was American trumpeter Louis Armstrong, innovator and the first international jazz star. But my next door neighbour in hall raved about Ken Collier.

Ken believed there was a pure New Orleans sound and his mission was to keep this sound alive. The basic tenets were no solos and no showing off, so all his tracks feature ensemble playing and so restrained his his playing you would scarcely know the band was led by a trumpeter. Whether there ever was such a style in an idiom which grew up with marching bands and then turned to red light clubs, environments which sound chaotic to me, is open to question but preserving that tradition was Ken's crusade, and he would have considered Louis Armstrong, let alone Humphrey Lyttelton (with his ever so slightly modernist alto saxophonist Bruce Turner) as turncoats.

The day will cost £14 including lunch, coffee and tea. To book please send SAE and cheques, £14 payable to Narberth U3A, to Tudor Thomas, 11 Beechwood Place, Narberth SA67 7EE. Further information from Graham Goodeve on 01437 741391 or email jggoodeve@tiscali.co.uk, or our Margaret Massey on 01792 205028
The venue is the Nant-Y-Ffin Hotel, Llandissilio. It sounds like a really good day out. I won't be there but that shouldn't count against me as I shall be en-route to Bali that very day.

SMILE TRAIN CHARITY BARN DANCE
Joy Gillard, a U3A member, is organising this event on her own bat at Ostreme Hall on Friday 8 May at 7.30pm. The calling and the music will be provided by the same expert. Profit will go to this deserving charity founded in 1999 who provide free hair lip operations in less developed parts of the world. In addition they have currently trained 23,00 medical professionals in 76 countries including India, Philipines and Brazil.

Please support her fund raising effort, tickets are only £5, please bring your own drinks, though refreshments will be on sale, they will not be free as indicated on last Wednesday's slide show. Various Swansea U3A members have tickets for sale or call Joy directly on 366376. It sounds like a fun evening.

U3A ACTIVITIES for WEEK STARTING 27 APRIL

MONDAY
CHESS and ITALIAN will NOT meet again until OCTOBER
(READING 4 continues on second Mondays, next 11 May at 10.30)

TUESDAY
NEW PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP meets for second time at 10am in the annexe of the Vivian Hall at Blackpill. They hope to include a photo-shoot in Clyne Park so please bring your digital camera and a laptop could be useful.
ART APPRECIATION have hired a coach to Cardiff to visit the Sisley in South Wales exhibition, some also hope to take in the Origins Exhibition run by Elisabeth Walker who gave the Wednesday lecture on The Red Lady of Paviland. The bus leaves Wellington Street opposite Swansea central Tesco at 9.30 and leaves Cardiff for the return at 4pm. As far as I know the trip is fully booked, contact Mo Ellard 363465 to check for cancellations.

WEDNESDAY
JIVE as always at the Monkey Cafe at 10.30
LECTURE at 2pm is 'Diet and Behaviour throughout Life' by Professor David Benton

THURSDAY
FRENCH is cancelled, the group will restart in October.

FRIDAY
TAI CHI at 9.30 and 11am at Hazel Court in the Exercise Room
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL will meet for a talk by Margaret Massey on Petra in Jordan (corrected from earlier issues).

AFGHANISTAN and THE GREAT GAME
The Tricycle Theatre in London have a very special offering until14 June which I find so tempting that I am wondering how to fit into an impossibly tight schedule, that presumes that tickets are still available after a highly positive Newsweek Review on Friday and a four star review by The Guardian's senior critic Michael Billington in today's paper.

They are presenting 12 half hour plays by different authors writing from different perspectives on Afghanistan, covering from the massive British Army defeat at Kabul in 1842 to the present day. Rudyard Kipling was writing about The Great Game in 1900. It covers, British Diplomacy in the early years and our support for the Opium trade, present day Foreign Office at work, USA unwitting supporting the Islamist cause when supplying them with anti-Russian aid, Kabul lost to The Taliban in 1996, 9/11 and present day NATO action.

It is a trilogy with a single part for £13 on weekdays, but the whole trilogy is given at weekends for £36, Part 1 - 10.45am , Part 2 - 2.30pm, Part 3 - 7.30pm. Box Office 020 7328 1000 or www.tricycle.co.uk. It runs daily until 14 June.

It is easy to envisage power theatre can illuminate more economically than any other medium the reality which is Afghanistan, and it does so the viewer to draw his own conclusions, but all leave with a far more comprehensive view of the country, its politics and its history.

I cannot do better than quote the last sentence of Michael Billington's review. 'Something remarkable is happening at the Tricycle, where Afghan history and culture are being made manifest in a uniquely challenging, theatrically exciting way.'