Archive for News
Reading Festival of Brass 2019
Following on from the success of last year’s Reading Festival of Brass, Saints were delighted to be invited once again by the Reading Spring Gardens Band to perform at this year’s event. Not resting on its laurels, the event had also grown in size from last year, with the addition of the Tadley Concert Brass band. This year’s concert moved to a new venue at the Michael Malnick Centre Theatre at Leighton Park School Reading, in order to accommodate both more musicians and spectators!
The concert itself was tinged with some sadness, due to the passing of Reading Spring Gardens’ conductor David Ruel in the days leading up to it. David was well-known and a friend to many in the brass-banding community across the country. We hope that the concert served as a fitting tribute to his memory and we were proud to be able to have been a part of this.
As with last year’s Reading Festival of Brass, this was a concert with a twist. While the purpose as always was to present an entertaining programme of music, the concert also had a slight contesting element to it. While no prizes were on offer, editor of 4BarsRest Iwan Fox was in attendance, marking each band on their performance, which had to fulfil a certain number of criteria. Each band was required to perform an overture, a march, a solo, and hymn, and then a final item of each band’s own choosing.
Performing first, Saints opened the concert with the overture Henry the Fifth by Ralph Vaughn Williams. As our solo item, Saints’ Flugel player Michael Bird performed Paul Lovatt-Cooper’s One Day, described by the composer as music which follows in the footsteps of Pat Methany’s music, who is famous for his easy listening jazz styles. Our march number came from the catalogue of Salvation Army music, Star Lake by Eric Ball, as did our hymn requirement, which was fulfilled by Darren Shaw’s Guardian of My Soul – an arrangement which combines the composer’s own song I Worship You with the well-known hymn O Jesus, I have Promised, both of which contain the lyric Guardian of my Soul. Our own-choice finale returned to the pen of Paul Lovatt-Cooper, with standing ranks of cornet and trombone players performing Horizons.
After being entertained by both Tadley Concert Brass and Reading Spring Gardens, we returned to the stage for a massed band finale of all three bands together performing Roy Newsome’s march Belmont and The Lost Chord.
The Festival was once again a great success and we were delighted to be a part of it. We look forward to similar success at the Reading Festival of Brass 2020!
Wokingham Celebrates the Life of Bob Wyatt
Saints were extremely honoured to be asked to provide music during the funeral service for the honorary alderman of Wokingham, Mr Bob Wyatt.
The funeral of the former mayor of Wokingham took place in All Saints Church, preceded by a funeral procession which paid tribute to one of his great passions in life: the Austin Seven motorcar.
Before and after the service, the band played a number of military and army marches, again reflecting another of Mr Wyatt’s great interests. During the service, Saints provided the music to Jerusalem, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, and I Vow to Thee My Country. The Last Post was also played by the band’s cornet player and Wokingham Town Council’s honorary bugler, Damon Emes.
Saints have always been very proud to support the people and community of Wokingham and always take great pride in performing our civic duties. It was a privilege to be able to play our part in celebrating the life of Bob Wyatt – a man who had done so much for the town of Wokingham for so long.
Category: Engagement, News |
Success at SCABA 2019
On 24 February 2019, Saints made the relatively short trip around the M25 to The Hawth Theatre in Crawley for the SCABA Spring Contest. This has become a yearly event in the Saints calendar as the ideal opportunity to give the Regional test piece a run-out under competitive conditions away from the safety of the bandroom!
Competing in the Second Section, Saints performed the march Praise by Wilfred Heaton as our own choice march number, before this year’s Regional Test Piece Rise of the Phoenix by Darrol Barry as our major work. Unsurprisingly, every other band performed the same test piece, giving us the chance to see where we stood a few weeks before the Regional Finals themselves.
Once all bands had performed and the adjudicator, Melvin White, had tallied his scores, we were delighted to find out that we had placed in second overall – meaning that we got to take home exactly the same trophy we won the year before!
Thank you again to SCABA for running another successful Spring Contest – it is an invaluable opportunity for us to practice the Regional piece under contest conditions.
Onwards and upwards to Stevenage in a few weeks for the Regional Finals!
Category: Engagement, News |
Christmas with Saints!
It has been another successful Christmas season for Saints, with concerts and carols being performed both locally and live via satellite to as far as Australia!
On 27th November 2018, the band again led the Christmas parade around the town at the Wokingham Winter Carnival. The town centre was packed with people as the procession weaved its way around the town before concluding in the centre. This year we were also extremely excited to support the young musicians of the Berkshire Maestros Bracknell and Wokingham Music Centre, who led the crowds in the lead up to the turning-on of the town’s Christmas lights. The musical future of the town is very much in safe hands!
On 1st December 2018, the band performed as Day 1 of the Wokingham Living Advent Calendar at Wokingham Town Hall. Supporting the Thames Valley Hospice, the advent calendar showcases local artists each day leading up to Christmas. This year our performance was broadcast live via Facebook to a number of viewers down under, making it a truly international event!
Finally, in-between numerous carolling appearances at local supermarkets, housing estates and shopping centres, we performed our own Christmas concert on 14th December 2018 at Wokingham Town Hall. Playing to another packed house, the band performed a varied concert of carols (as selected by followers of the band’s Facebook and Twitter pages in the lead-up to the concert), well-known Christmas numbers, as well as some non-Christmas music also.
The highlight for many was the band’s performance of Philip Harper’s The Greatest Storyteller, a piece of work arranged for the Cory Band’s Brass in Concert entertainment programme in 2017 to commemorate the life of Roald Dahl. The piece comprises three tunes from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda, and gave a number of soloists from the band a chance to shine. Soprano Cornet Llewellyn Wells featured in the title number from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, while our euphonium duo of Rosie Saxton and Mark Lowe performed together during Pure Imagination. Finally, Principle Cornet George Sandford led the finale of When I Grow Up.
Finally, our Christmas concert gave us the chance to reward particular members of the band for their hard work and contribution to Saints over the course of the previous year. This year, 2nd Baritone player and Contest Secretary Leighton Cornelius was voted Bandsman of the Year by the rest of the band, while Bb Bass Josh Moorhouse was awarded the MD’s Musician of the Year award, with both being richly deserved.
Remembrance Sunday 2018
Like hundreds of other bands up and down the country, Saints once again were proud to do our bit for Remembrance Sunday, remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.
This year, in addition to supporting Remembrance Sunday itself, Saints performed a Remembrance-inspired concert at the Market in Wokingham town centre on 27 October 2018. On an extremely cold Saturday morning, the band performed a number of pieces to a large number of appreciative shoppers, comprising a number of band classics as well as more poignant military marches and hymns.
On Remembrance Sunday itself, Saints first led the march at Wargrave before returning to Wokingham town centre to lead the procession to the All Saints Church. It was amazing to see the streets of the town packed with people paying their respects and we were again immensely privileged to be able to play our part in this.
Category: Engagement, News |
Second Section National Brass Band Championship Finals 2018
Following our successful second-place finish at the Regional Finals in March, on 16 September 2018 Saints made the relatively short trip up the M4 to Cheltenham to join 17 other bands at the National Finals at the Racecourse. This was the second time in three years we had made it to the Second Section Finals.
This year, bands in the Second Section had been set Stephen Bulla’s Firestorm as the test piece. The piece was composed for the tenth anniversary of the United States Army Brass Band and had its first performance at the Gala Concert of the North-American Brass Band Championships on 27th April 1991. The inspiration for the piece was the war in the Persian Gulf and its continuous presentation to the world through the medium of television. Bulla wanted to capture the emotion and colour of the events of war as they were played out on the television screen. Comprising the sounds of airborne bombing raids, flashback sequences, a Baghdad market and the unspoiled beauty of the Iraqi countryside before the siege, the final page of the score bears the poignant inscription: Completed February 26 1991, Kuwait liberated today.
Unfortunately for us, this was an occasion where we very much ‘left our best in the bandroom’, and it is fair to say that the performance we gave on the day was not of the standard we had achieved in the run-up to the finals. Once the dust had settled we found ourselves ranked seventeenth. While obviously a disappointing result after all the work we had put in, it was a privilege just to be able to take part in the finals and compete with the very best bands in our section from across the country. Getting to grips with such a difficult piece was certainly an experience which benefited the band greatly.
A special thank you must also go to the Pontardulais Town Band, also competing in our section, for lending us a Bb Bass at the very last moment before we were due to take to the stage. In the final rehearsal in the warmup room before our performance, a valve guide on one of our own basses decided to pick that moment to snap in two, and the Bb Bass player of Pontardulais did not flinch in lending us their instrument. This very much summed up the spirit of the weekend.
Category: Engagement, News |
Supporting Brass for Africa
At our rehearsal on 4th June 2018, Saints were proud to welcome to our bandroom the Executive Director of Brass for Africa, Jim Trott, who came armed with two new pieces fresh from the pen of Alan Fernie.
‘The Storyteller’ is a fun, and energetic piece, whilst ‘RAIN!’ is an upbeat, up tempo number. Both pieces were composed for the young musicians involved in the Brass for Africa programmes. And were premiered on the Brass for Africa Bandstand in Kampala in April 2018.
The purpose of Jim’s visit to our bandroom was for Saints to perform both pieces in order to provide recordings of each for the charity’s website, where both pieces will be available to purchase. Most importantly, 100% of the cost of both pieces is donated to the Brass for Africa charity.
Brass for Africa is a wonderful charity and one which Saints are proud to support. It was a privilege to be offered the opportunity to record each of Alan’s pieces and we hope this will not be the last time we can work with the organisation.
Both pieces can be purchased at the links below: