Trinity Orchestra plays Pink Floyd\'s \'Dark Side of the Moon\' at Forbidden Fruit Festival 04.06.2012

Following an afternoon of torrential rain, mud-soaked socks and a rescheduled Pink Floyd performance, Trinity Orchestra returned to sunny Forbidden Fruit Festival grounds on Monday, taking to the Lighthouse Stage at 7pm.

Playing as part of a line-up including Wilco, Beirut, James Vincent McMorrow and Chromatics, we were delighted to see Speak To Me and Breathe drawing festival goers from afar, Time and Breathe (Reprise) successfully packing the tent before Karen Cowley’s soaring vocals on Great Gig in the Sky brought the album’s first half to a close. With the second half coming in fast and enthusiasm growing further, the final chords of our Comfortably Numb encore failed to satisfy the crowd’s appetite for more and we faced that infamous chant for one more tune. With some luck we managed to pull together a second encore of fully orchestrated Stevie Wonder arrangements by Peter Joyce to which the players and audience danced away the next 20 minutes before finally bringing our 2012 Forbidden Fruit Festival experience to an end.

Many thanks to festival co-ordinators POD (especially for being so accommodating with the rescheduling troubles), John Kearns and the sound tech crew, players, singers and band. We’d also like to extend a huge thanks to conductor Matt Rafter and last but by no means least, arranger of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ for Trinity Orchestra, James O’Leary.

Photograph taken from www.facebook.com/forbiddenfruitfestival

This May the Trinity Orchestra Chamber Ensemble made it’s debut, performing as part of the very first LINK Culturefest by Dublin-based arts organisation Block T. Stripped-down arrangements of Radiohead’s complete third album, ‘OK Computer’, were played by a 30-piece orchestral group with strings, acoustic band and singers. St. Michan’s Church, a specially atmospheric venue and one of Dublin’s oldest Medieval churches, housed our wonderfully enthusiastic audience and contributed towards making this intimate concert all the more enjoyable.

Special thanks go to the amazingly talented OKO, who provided a great opening set on the night. With impovised beats and melodies drawing from influences such as krautrock, vintage TV shows, free jazz, noise, dub, drum ‘n’ bass, dubstep, musak, metal and more, the band’s compositions filled the church with waves of original synth-infused sounds, setting a high standard of musicianship for the evening.

Following this Trinity Orchestra Chamber Ensemble took centre-stage, showcasing our take on Radiohead’s alternative rock. From Airbag‘s attention-grabbing guitar opening and Paranoid Android‘s shifting moods and melodies to The Tourist‘s last lilting phrases, the arrangements by Éna Brennan, Brian Denvir, Rob Farhat, Rob Kearns and James O’Leary were received with escalating appreciation by a crowd of hundreds.