Hydration Before Interpretation I must admit that, until recently, I hadn’t given much thought to the effect climate change might have on brass bands. Rising sea levels, melting glaciers and extreme weather all seemed rather remote from the average evening rehearsal in a draughty church hall somewhere in the British Isles. Then it struck me. […]
Disappearing players Back in the day, and by that I mean 30 years ago, a conductor could quite safely give a wayward brass band player the heave-ho without having to worry about a replacement. There were players galore, literally growing on trees, and the maestro only had to sneeze and a car would screech to […]
You look forward to those two hours of intense playing, getting really stuck into a test piece for the contest. You’re whistling the tuneful parts all the way to the band room, with a smile plastered over your face. Parts practised at home – ready, pumped and stoked. Every seat is filled; everyone is there. […]
10 quick-fire Christmas Quiz Questions to Test Your Brass Band Knowledge 1. Which carol is this bass trombone snippet taken from? 2. Who is this Secret Santa? 3. The music for ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ was written by which famous German composer? 4. Which carol is also known as ‘Greensleeves’ and for an extra […]
Willie Wag, the conductor of Blesses o’ th’ Shed band, thumbed through the hymn book, looking for inspiration, but with empty seats and another resignation on the horizon, inspiration was in short supply as banding trouble loomed. Several adverts produced one applicant. A one armed, ninety-seven-year-old trombonist who fell asleep halfway through his audition performance […]
Tuning up is the bain of the brass banding world. Don’t you just love it when you hear the words “Let’s have a tune up”. The conductor lifts the dreaded contraption off the stand, spends another ten minutes fiddling around trying to get it to work, discovers the battery is flat, replaces them and resets, […]
After the drama and euphoria of playing at this year’s National Finals at the Royal Albert Hall, I chatted with 4Bars Rest’s Iwan Fox, reminiscing banding times past when we both played for Tredegar in the late 80s and 90s, when I could fit into a ‘medium’ size band jacket with room to spare and […]
Have you noticed how inventive conductors can be? They try to make you visualise the unbelievable. They make things up. They lie like a cheap watch. But why? Is it because they think telling porkies is the best psychological tool to motivate and get the band to play better to puff up their own ego, […]
The summer park job season is upon us and I just did my first of the year at the end of May in Bedwellty Park, Tredegar. The grounds are magnificent, the bandstand wonderful, the best place in Tredegar, not far from the large garden shed that the local band rehearse in. It would have been […]
It’s that time of year again when over sixty invited bands prepare for the Spring Festival at Tackpool… sorry I meant Blackpool (Freudian slip). My band, City of Cardiff, got the best deal this year with Hubert Bath’s Freedom, a great piece of music that isn’t as tricky as the other sections. After recalling the […]
