An entertaining and enthralling evening of music

Chris Beaumont is a self-taught but exceptional musician, whose love of the xylophone has made him the leading expert on the music of Sir Patrick Moore.

While most of us recall the familiar astronomer from The Sky at Night, many will also remember him as a xylophonist of considerable ability. Fewer will be aware of the large amount of music he wrote for the instrument.

Chris Beaumont not only performed a wide range of music, most of it in his own arrangements, but brought us many of Sir Patrick’s own compositions. He opened with Freefall, then a march entitled Halley’s Comet and later we were enthralled by movements from a suite which opens with Dragonflies and moves through hedgehogs to earthworms. The final piece from Sir Patrick was a jolly piece called Halley’s Rag.