Kerry Ellis Joins The Fulltone Orchestra
- tabithacatlin
- Jul 22
- 4 min read
Cadogan Hall - 01/09/2025
Here is an EXCITING Interview with musical theatre star Kerry Ellis and Anthony Brown; Fulltone's Musical Director about their upcoming concert.
"We do great music, with great people, in great places... You don't want to miss it!"
The fantastic Kerry Ellis is going to be joining the 40-piece symphony orchestra: The Fulltone Orchestra for a glitzy night of musicals! For one night and ONE NIGHT ONLY. It'll be a night filled with songs written for stage and screen, you may know and love. Maybe even something new for you to discover! Here's what Kerry Ellis and Fulltone's Anthony Brown have got to say about this exciting evening and what is in store...
Q: Tell us all about the show and the breath-taking journey?
Kerry: It’s always flattering and a privilege to be asked to perform with an orchestra and even more so on this occasion working with an Orchestra who I know and love dearly – it is just pure joy.
I love this Orchestra. I love what they stand for, their wonderful people and brilliant musicians and I’m passionate about the performances they create. I’m really excited to just be part of the evening.
Anthony: The show is based around a theme we like to do regularly. Our last concert a couple years ago was with Lucie Jones and was similar. It's about taking a selection of songs and pieces of music that both parties have a connection to and that they want to perform. It's not about having an overarching theme and sticking to some corporate agenda or trying to achieve something deliberate. What does Kerry want to do? It develops organically! It'll be a very glamourous night!
Q: As Musical Director of The Fulltone Orchestra, what makes the orchestra stand out?
Anthony: The people within it! We are an orchestra built from a mix of musicians; we have some really good amateur players, great students, ex professionals, music teachers and we have some professional players that are used to playing in much bigger orchestras than this. It's that mix that I think brings something quite special to Fulltone.
What makes us different is we approach everything that we do with an energy. We don't over rehearse at all; we have one big rehearsal, then a sound check on the day and then bang we put on a concert! That generates its own kind of energy, that's what I like. I like that feeling that 'you're on the edge'. You can feel it in the room, we all enjoy what we do, we get on well as a group, it's not always the same group and there's always new faces. But, everyone that comes to us they always say how much they've enjoyed the experience. If the musicians are enjoying what they're doing and that transposes to the audience. When you add someone like Kerry on top it elevates it to another level!
Q: What will you be bringing to the stage?
Kerry: When we started to talk about setlist songs ideas, I love that Antony and Jemma are open to my suggestions and it’s a real discussion and collaboration. Having an orchestra for the evening in a beautiful setting like the Cadogan Hall creates a real sense of occasion so we thought it would be a wonderful idea to bring the glamour of old school movie hits that people will know and love, and are sometimes able to join in and sing along, and other times to sit back and simply enjoy the beautiful music.
Q: What do you want the audience to feel and take away from the performance?
Kerry: As always, you want people to have a wonderful time. It’s a couple of hours of escapism to just forget about everything else, be in the moment and hopefully feel something magical.
Anthony: I want audience to appreciate. I suspect many of the audience members won't be regular orchestra go'ers and won't have seen a full-size live orchestra. You can't quite describe to someone who has not seen or felt it before; the power of the music as it starts and hits you! That's something you have to feel. You don't get it on a CD, vinyl or video, you get a feeling from the sound waves that hit you that is just magical. This is why it's so important to support live music!
Q: If you had to describe your performance in 3 colours, what would they be?
Anthony: Pink as we are heavily female oriented in terms of players, we're open and friendly. black for the formal side of what we do, as a business/industry so we are quite serious and silver for the glamour. A sprinkle of silver!
Kerry: Red for the drama, gold for the glamour and silver for the silver screen.
Q: Is there a role you’re excited to re-live in this concert or something new you’re looking forward to crafting?
Kerry: We are including a few musical hits, but what I am looking forward to about this concert is that there will be songs that people haven’t heard me sing before or heard me sing in a very long time, which is fun and wonderful for me and also brings something different to the audience.
What are you waiting for?! CLICK HERE to get your tickets and don't miss out on this ONE NIGHT ONLY magical evening of stunning live music.
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