A nostalgic throwback brought by PRC's Film Feels Festival

The evening’s entertainment kicked off around 7pm, when Peterborough’s music students shared throwbacks to notorious film soundtracks with their audience, covering any genre from Dirty Dancing’s ‘Time of my life’ to ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ from the soundtrack of the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel.

Country musician Henry Birkett took off his cowboy hat for this special occasion to perform the vocals and notorious riffs of ‘Eye of the Tiger’, accompanied by the evening’s first band.

Even award-winning Tara Pasveer, who is mostly seen with a guitar in her hand and a microphone in front of her, stepped out of her comfort zone to contribute to the song on the piano, and later on perform Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ with her powerful voice.

Next to the main stage, performances were enhanced by short videos put together by film student Emils Lisovskis, with the intention of syncing the video snippets according to the soundtracks, as well as strengthening the tension and power that was created on stage.

“I tried to make the sound sync to the actual video and create more emotion.” He tells us.

According to what song was performed, and what characters came on screen to show the audience the soundtracks’ attributed films, everyone on stage put on an alter-ego for the show to give the most authentic and well-rounded performance possible, causing many musicians to expand their usual stage persona and performance skills.

Right after guitarist Cameron McDonald dropped some unexpected riffs to keep Tom Cruise company in ‘Danger Zone’ from the film ‘Top Gun’, Henry Birkett slowed it all down with “I don’t wanna miss a thing”, followed by a cover of ‘Grease Lighting’, and the funkiest performance of the entire night with Aidi Yao on the vocals for ‘Soul Man’ and Jakub Ujczak on the trumpet.

In the second act, drummer Jaydon Wood finally made it on stage to kick off with ‘Happy’ from ‘Despicable Me’, and Tara went back to her roots with a more laid-back and jazzy cover of Norah Jones’ ‘Don’t Know Why’, followed by more emotions coming from two power ballads from the Twilight and Skyfall soundtrack, sung by Kristel Moore.

Some technical difficulties made ‘Slightly Dutch’ spontaneously recur on stage together for the first time after their gig at Peterborough’s first Oxjam festival last October, performing Henry Birkett’s “Something in the Water”, making the audience to join him in the chorus.

Technical difficulties were resolved, and if their cover of the classic “Time of my life” didn’t get some guests dancing (although not too dirtily) yet, things were about to change during ‘New Divide’ by Linkin Park and ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, with Jaydon Wood and Cameron McDonald spicing up the whole show with their individual drum and guitar solos.

Fires and flames were far from extinguished when ‘The Final Countdown’ got everyone on their feet again, while also indicating that the festival was possibly coming to an end.

Responding to the audience’s chants and demands, one of the former bands came back on stage to perform ‘Smells Like Teens Spirit’ once again for a grande finale at the end of the night.

“People are going to go out now and do their own projects, so I’m for example releasing an EP called “Shots with Strangers” which will be available on iTunes.” Henry Birkett tells us.

“I’m doing a couple of gigs in places like Ramsey on the 14th July. It’s a big festival that will take place there and I’m really looking forward to being on stage there soon.” Cameron McDonald tells us when talking about his future plans as a session guitarist.

PRC’s level 3 musicians will come together one last time to take part in the Sausage & Cider music festival which will be held in the grounds of Elton Hall near Peterborough from the July 27-29.