Top Notes our music programme under the Learning Age Project for Older People certainly hit a high note on Monday night, 24th January 2011. The project celebrated all the wonderful musical abilitiy of the participants at a cafe style event held at the Verbal Arts Centre.

From October last year, participants on the TOP NOTES project have been working on learning and playing music as well as singing and more recently song writing with a range of younger players and singers. The project was orginally formulated by musician Martin Coyle from the band Balkan Alien Sound. The project has been funded by Derry City Council and The Atlantic Philanthropies. The performance evening hosted a wide range of music and songs with the participants playing to a packed house and both audience and participants alike really enjoyed the experience.

The Top Notes Players played a range of lovely traditional music pieces from The Gander in the Pratie Hole to Si Bheag Si Mhor. Some of the pieces were lively jigs and others had more haunting and beautiful meoldies.

Our singers entertained us with a funny number called "The Duchess". Originally a warm up number for the group to use as an exercise to warm up the voice, the singers decided that they would use it for the peformance and developed it into a round. Children in the audience particularly loved this number. And again another familiar number "This Little Light of Mine" - a song we learn when we are usually very young was developed into a gospel version with wonderful harmonies. The singing group has been led by Aideen McGinn.This song will also be used in the Children's Intergenerational Workshop on 2nd February.

Then we were joined by the U3A Ukulele Orchestra who had chosen a range of songs to play that most of us knew from "Aint She Sweet" to rock and roll numbers by Elvis Presley. They really got the audience involved clapping and singing along.

And the final number was presented by the singers "With a Little Help of My Friends" - but the Joe Cocker version to be precise. No gentle Beatles rendition for this group. No this was belted out with great gusto and really summed up the whole project. It was with the help of these younger musicians and singers and song writers that this older generation entered into the performance spotlght once more with great success.

Marie O'Kane, participant commented

Thank you for the opportunity to work in a music groupand let us find out what we were capable of and indeed the fun it all coule be