Following the highly successful ‘Rightful Owners of the Song’ concert, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) conducted by Greg Francis, the Liverpool City Council approached Greg to provide the concert (with the RLPO and 18 singers) to celebrate the opening of the new pierhead behind the Liver Building on 30th July 2009. The initial concert at the Philharmonic Halls had sold out – and the management reported that the drinks bar had sold more product than in the entire history of the venue ! Greg Francis said “This tells us much about the tastes of the British listening public. I have always been convinced that there is a very large market out there for good quality popular orchestral music. I was quite obviously vindicated in my opinions, by the fact that, not only did the Philharmonic concert of popular orchestral music sell out last year, but this year, we had approximately 8000 people sat outside at the pier head celebrations – in the pouring rain ! The weather could not have been worse and yet, the crowd sat resolutely until the end of the performance”.

Greg has been involved in a number of projects in association with Liverpool this past couple of years, including the premier of The National Concert Orchestra’s celebration of the music of Leroy Anderson in the beautiful St George’s Hall, and various ‘Viennise Balls’ in that same illustrious building – affectionately known in Liverpool as ‘Scouse Waltzes’ ! These latter have been highly successful, and Greg is hoping that, together with the organiser Gordon Ross, they will be presenting many more of these very special ‘Viennese Balls’ in select venues throughout the U.K. in 2010, with the National Concert Orchestra. As Greg adds “ It also seems to me that there are a high number of people who like to dance to the Strauss and other popular Viennese music, particularly to a live orchestra. Unfortunately, for some reason, it seems that most organisers think that the British public are so reserved, they wish to just sit there and watch. This is not the case of course, and I have seen that, given the opportunity to take part and join in the dancing, they are perfectly comfortable – and most capable, of doing that”.

The National Concert Orchestra have performed a number of ‘Summer Proms’ and ‘Last Night of the Proms’ during 2009, and Musical Director and Conductor of the orchestra, Greg Francis, has taken the opportunity not only, to introduce a wider selection of popular music and film/show music to the Proms, but also, has included a number of Leroy Anderson favourites and a selection of popular Strauss music. It is deemed the policy of the orchestra in it’s concerts, to play as wide and varied an amount of music as possible within the given time, and therefore, Greg has purposely set out to re-arrange some of the standard music orchestrations, to avoid overlengthy pieces.

During the latter part of the year, the orchestra have also been accompanying the world famous ‘Kings of Swing – Rat Pack Party’ joining alongside the swing orchestra which normally accompanies that show.

There are links to video of most of the above, and also to other concert performances, which you will find on the ‘links’ page. Also, you can now contact Greg Francis direct by email at : greg@NationalConcertOrchestra.co.uk