Saturday 22/07 10:30 Abraham Darby School Brass Band 11:10 Penkhull Village Band. Sam Johnson 11:50 Whitchurch Brass Band. Adrian 12:30 ACCELER8 Band. Jef 13:10 Cleobury Mortimer Concert Brass. Amanda 13:50 Wem Jubilee Band. Ruth 14:30 Rode Hall Silver Band. Giansi 15:10 Lutterworth Town Band. Andrew 15:50 Wellington (Telford) Brass Band. Liz 16:30 Jackfield Band. Darrin 17:10 Sovereign Brass
Concert 19:30 - Jackfield Band and Wellington (Telford) Brass Band
Sunday 23/07 !!TIMES TBC!!
10:30 Highley Colliery Brass Band. Chris 11:10 City of Wolverhampton Brass Band. Tom Brown 11:50 Florence Brass. Knight 12:30 Staffordshire Band. Fodden 13:10 Shrewsbury Brass Band. Pulford 13:50 Spare. 14:30 Band of the Prince of Wales. Mike 15:10 Wolverhampton Community Brass Band. DG 15:50 The Shirley Band. Middleton 16:30 Festival Brass
WolverhamptonCommunityBrassBand Newsletter2- 26th November 2018
Rehearsals
Please ensure that you are ready to start weekly rehearsals promptly at 7:15pm by arriving no later than 7:05pm unless you have a good reason for being late. The cost of hiring the new rehearsal room is now three times what we were previously paying at Dudley Road, so we need to make maximum use of the time at the venue. Rehearsal time is really important to develop our repertoire. We have invested a lot of money into buying new music and really need everyone’s commitment to rehearsals each week, unless you are working, ill, have exams or on school trips. Your attendance benefits everyone else during rehearsal time. Mobile phones turned off please during rehearsals.
Uniform Update
The following update refers to purple band jackets, purple waterproof jacket covers, band bow ties or girls band cravats.
To preserve our £3000 investment in Band uniform 1. Band jackets are not to be worn between home and venue on concert days, due to possible inclement weather during the winter months. Traditionally band jackets are put on in the band room before a concert only. I also, do not want players sitting in wet concert jackets during the concert. You have all been given a purple waterproof cover, for your jacket, please use it. 2 . Players who do not attend rehearsals regularly without good reason must hand back their uniform immediately when requested by the conductor. Letters will be sent out to those players if I am concerned about their attendance.
3 . Players living outside of Wolverhampton will be supplied with uniform on concert days only, due to the logistics of returning uniform in the event of non-attendance to concerts. 4 . University students will be provided with uniform on concert days. In the last two yearssome students have not attended for weeks due to university work, exams and commitments.This is fine because their education comes first. It will make it easier for us to keep tabs on where jackets are if they are handed out and collected back in on concert days. 5 . Players who cannot attend concerts for good reason may be requested to return their uniform for concert day replacement players. Request for this uniform will be made well in advance and return it to Sue. 6 . Parents of younger members of the band who attend school will need to speak to Sue if their child’s uniform is getting too small so thatreplacements can be sorted. 7 . Any uniform that is damaged or lost needs to be reported to Sue so that it can be repaired or paid for.
Thank you D. Gray
Tata Steel community award
Thank you for your Community Award application for Wolverhampton Community Brass Band.
We are delighted to let you know that your application has qualified for a £150 community award.
Could you please let me have the bank details of the band and I will arrange for payment of the donation.
Thank you for contacting us and good luck with future fundraising.
Kind regards,
Julie
New Drummer!
Great news. Due to our amazing popularity and growing reputation from September we will have a new/regular kit player. Chris, an amazing player will be a most welcome addition to our ever growing band.
Exams!
Congratulations to Callum our Rep player and Isobel one of our 3rd cornets, both younger members of our band, on their recent exam successes. Callum gained a distinction at grade 6 and Isobel a merit at grade 5. Once again this re-enforces our philosophy of encouraging the younger members of our band to achieve success through perseverance and of course performing with a successful, well organised and popular band, with high standards.
Skipton Grassroots Giving
Thank you so much for getting involved in Skipton Building Society’s Grassroots Giving initiative and congratulations on reaching the shortlisted stage; we’re delighted you and your community group took the time to apply and take part.
We received hundreds of applications from community groups, clubs and organisations from across the UK and we’re really impressed with the work that you do. To make it to the shortlist stage you beat off dozens of other applicants and were able to clearly demonstrate the positive impact you make in your local community.
In order to fairly allocate the 164 pots of £500 we asked the public to tell us who they wanted to receive the funding. We profiled you and all the other shortlisted applicants on our website, www.skiptongrg.co.uk, to help raise awareness of the work that you do, along with promoting your group on our social media channels too.
It’s with great delight that we’re contacting you today to let you know that your group has received enough public votes to make it into our top 164 winners. We had over 40,000 votes cast amongst the shortlisted groups and competition was really tough.
We’d like to take this time to congratulate your group and for being part of our Grassroots Giving initiative, for sharing with us the fantastic work that you do, and for being so active in supporting your local community.
You will soon be receiving postal correspondence from Skipton Building Society which will include a form for you to fill in with your bank details so the money can be transferred to your group. We would also love it if you could send us an image of your group receiving the news or with your certificate received from Skipton.
We'll also be planning activities in 2017 to further help to support community groups so please join us at twitter.com/SkiptonBS_GRG or Facebook.com/skiptonbs. To further help you celebrate and showcase your status as Grassroots Winners we've created the attached banner for you to add to your website, or use on your social media pages.
A huge congratulations again, you really are a worthy winner! And please remember not to announce this news until our 164 winners are officially revealed on the 7th November.
The Grassroots Giving Team
Elspeth - Former Pupil
Hi Dave
It was great to hear from you, Matthew (the MD of the band) who you emailed is actually my husband who I met playing in a previous band!
Not sure if you remember me, I was Elspeth McMillan and was at Regis until the end of 1979 when we moved to Croydon. I was in the 3rd year then and had had lessons with you for a couple of years I think and also went to Graisely. I recall you being a Liverpool fan and having your car sprayed red - which I wasn’t happy with being an Everton fan!
When we moved down south you were kind enough to encourage me by letter when I wrote to you after struggling to settle with my new teacher. You were right it did just take a bit of time and I also learnt lots from him over two periods.
I carried on playing at school and it was the head of music from school who encouraged me to join the local brass band, and I’ve been playing in them ever since! I certainly attribute a lot of my development in technical aptitude to being thrown in at the deep end on the front row! Although I hadn’t taken music as a subject at o or a level originally, half way through 6th form I changed tack to taking Music and Practical Music A levels and auditioning for music colleges.
I went to London College from 86-89 and had the great honour of being taught by Willie Lang, what a character and still a cracking player at 70! There was a really great quality brass band there lead by Jim Gourlay and Paul Archibald as well as various wind bands and orchestras.
I’ve been playing with Brighton for about 8 years now after stints in Croydon, Crystal Palace and Becontree and the band is definitely on the up from some really tough times - we’re practically a full band now with just a couple of vacancies - we even recorded a CD!
There are about 10 brass bands within a 20 mile radius of us, which can mean it’s a challenge to get players, but we’re also very happy to help each other out!
We contest quite regularly as well as do plenty of concerts/engagements, and just ramping up for our Xmas season and the long trip up to Skegness for the Butlins contest in January.
I had a look at your band website and looks like you have a great complement of players and your own band room - that’s fantastic! I’ve dropped a little donation towards your fund for getting uniforms and banners, hope you reach your target!
Aside from a very infrequent dep appearance at an orchestra, due to work commitments the band is the only regular playing I have time for these days, but great to be able to do that.
Thanks again for setting me off on that journey.
Best wishes
Elspeth
Major Jason Griffiths Director of Music, Corps of Army Music
Best of luck Dave (my inspirational first teacher who helped launch my career) and all the guys in the band. Best wishes,
Ironbridge Brass Band Festival 2017
The weather is often the talking point in the week running up to the Festival and this year was no different. It did not however detract from yet another great weekend with some really high quality performances from all bands and based on the huge numbers of people attending it is still as popular as ever if not more.
We gave the Festival a slightly different look and feel this year based on the feed-back from previous years. I hope that your experience was a good one and if you have any ideas or comments that you feel we would find useful please feel free to feed these back.
As I have said in the past, Brass Bands have been in decline over the years, but events such as this help to secure this music form by providing a stress free environment for performers as well as an opportunity to showcase banding to a wider public. The Festival is often the first brass band event some people have ever attended.
I would like to personally thank you for your band’s involvement and would ask you to pass on my gratitude to your band members for their professionalism and participation in this year’s event.
Yours sincerely, Neil Festival Chairman
Wombourne Music Festival
Thank you for the conversation you had with our Committee members last December. I must say the Committee members who came to the concert in December were impressed by the quality of the Community Brass Band and gave complementary feedback at the January meeting.
We have your details on record and can assure you that you will be considered for a future concert.
Regards, Brian Wombourne Music Festival Chairman.