Recorders is a group that meets most weeks on a Friday 3.15-5.15pm at the City of Ely Bowls Club. We play a range of music as an ensemble of descant, treble, tenor and bass recorders. We cover early church music and madrigals; Baroque and Renaissance; through to Rag, Swing and Blues. You need to own a recorder (any of the above) and music stand and be able to read a line of music. We are a friendly group who enjoy playing together then having tea and cake to finish.

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Ely U3a Recorders in Concert

The Ely U3a Recorder Group have had a fantastic season of performing this Summer 2026.

We now have over twenty members and play most Friday afternoons together in Ely. This has enabled us to both work on our sight-reading skills, as well as working on improving skills with pieces we choose to practice up for performances. In the last two years the group has grown. We now have five or six people able to play bass recorders as well as a Great Bass and a Contra Bass

In June we played for the Ely U3a members at the AGM. We also took part in the Ely Arts Festival playing in St Mary’s Church, Ely, as part of a varied programme of musical groups who played around 15 minutes each.

Our biggest achievement of all was to return to the church of St Mary Magdalen in Wiggenhall near Kings Lynn to play an evening concert. We played carols there; Christmas 2025 and they invited us back. We had 60 people in the audience and played a very varied programme including music as early as 1551 from Susata to Annabel Knight’s arrangement of Thomas Arne’s Under The Greenwood Tree; Suo Gan, a Welsh Lullaby used in the film Empire of the Sun; music composed by Anthony Holborne and John Wilbye, and a few swung pieces.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction from the audience has been great and there are always people who have no idea that recorders include more in their range than just the descant. Hopefully, we have been ambassadors for the recorder!

Links to all the current groups with an interest in music and film are given below:

Recently, my husband has been attending the national U3a course on AI. As part of his exploration he has explored how AI can be used for music. As a trial we asked AI to produce for us a four part score for Happy Birthday. Very useful that it was able to produce a score which can be freely reproduced! Here is the result:

Page Editor: Liz Bassett