Name: Beyond Words: How Music Creates Meaning’
Start: 2025-11-15T15:00:00+00:00
Location: Guilford United Reformed Church

$Beyond Words: How Music Creates Meaning\u2019$

Join us for a free orchestral concert for all the family, and explore how music creates meaning and connections beyond words, and across generations.
Musicians from the University of Surrey and the town of Guildford will perform an intergenerational concert framed around the music of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), a local English composer and member of the women’s suffrage movement.
The afternoon will also feature a piece composed by our Honorary Visiting Professor, Odaline de la Martinez, as well as much-loved film and popular music arrangements including Jurassic Park, James Bond and ABBA.
The event will include a 30-minute interval during which audience members may try out selected instruments, facilitated by our Music Hub Partner, Surrey Arts.
You’ll have the opportunity to reflect on what the music means to you and meet the musicians during the interval, and share your experiences about the music you hear. All ages welcome, recommended children from 7+.
Programme
Ethel Smyth, ed. and arr. Valerie Langfield, Overture and Intermezzo from The Boatswain’s Mate
Ethel Smyth, ed. Peter Fender, Symphonie für kleines Orchester (UK premiere)
Ethel Smyth, ‘Two Interlinked French Folk Melodies’ from Entente Cordiale
Odaline de la Martinez, Scenes from the opera ‘Imoinda’
Monty Norman, Bill Conti, Paul and Linda McCartney, and John Barry, arr. Calvin Custer, Themes from ‘007’ (James Bond)
John Williams, arr. Calvin Custer, Highlights from ‘Jurassic Park’
Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson, arr. Richard Ling, ABBA Medley
This concert is being presented as part of the Being Human Festival 2025, in partnership with Surrey History Centre, Retrospect Opera and Surrey Arts.