HOWARD Rogerson and his Promenade Concert Orchestra celebrate ten years of music making on Sunday, May 21 (3pm) in the final concert of their season.

Staged at the Platform at Morecambe, the tenth anniversary concert programme starts with the rousing overture to Offenbach’s operetta Orheus in the Underworld, which includes the famous can-can and ends with Ivor Novello’s show selection from The Dancing Years. In between there will be Robert Farnon’s The Typewriter, Eric Coates’ Calling all Workers and tunes such as Jumping Bean, Westminster Waltz and Puffing Billy. The concert will feature audience requests from past programmes and new requests of light music pieces, and concludes with some of Sullivan’s best-known operetta music arranged for the ballet, Pineapple Poll.

PCO’s founder and musical director, Howard was awarded the Eric Morecambe Sunshine Culture Award 2014 for the culture the he and the PCO had brought to Morecambe.

The well thought of PCO gave its premiere performance at the Platform to an audience of 135. Since, its has gone on to give 40 concerts in Morecambe to more than 11,000 people.

Howard was born in Morley, Yorkshire, and after studies at the Huddersfield School of Music - now university - and the then Royal Manchester College of Music, he pursued a career as a clarinettist in Manchester and later London, working full-time and freelance with such orchestras as the D’Oyly Carte Opera, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and English Music Theatre touring the entire UK and abroad.

He returned north in 1978 when he was invited to become a founder member of the Orchestra of Opera North, where he worked full-time for ten and freelance for 12 years. Howard ran several chamber ensembles and gave many solo and chamber recitals throughout the country and in London, including BBC broadcasts and recordings. The commercial tapes of The Music Serenade (Opera North chamber ensemble Howard founded and managed) were reviewed by the BBC as the best available recordings of Mozart’s wind octets.

For a further 20 years he continued his performance career alongside teaching for the North Yorkshire Music Service as well as conducting Settle Orchestral Society for 15 years, developing its performance in and for the community. SOS also gave a number of choral and operatic performances with his wife’s choir, the Langcliffe Singers, which she had formed in 1984. Since 2006, he and his wife, Valerie Baulard, have lived in Morecambe.

Vocalist Val will be joining the PCO on Sunday for the jazz ballad numbers Ain’t She Sweet, Someone to Watch Over Me, With a Song in my Heart and Moon River, and the PCO will perform another anniversary commission written by an ex-violinist and composer with the PCO, Bethan Morgan-Williams entitled The Promenaders, an exciting work depicting Morecambe’s by-gone days.

Tickets are available from the Platform Box Office and VIC, Central Promenade on 01524-582803 www.lancaster.gov.uk/platform.

For further information visit www.promenadeconcertorchestra.org.uk.