John

The Band’s spring concert on 24th April this year was in aid of Scannappeal, a charity which aims to raise money for extra equipment for our local hospitals. The concert was held in Aylesbury High School, and was the first public appearance of our new conductor, Neil Chapman.

As it was the day after St George’s Day, all the music in the concert was either by English composers, or had English connections. The concert opened with Kenneth Alford’s march The Standard of St George. Neil quickly established an easy rapport with the audience as he introduced the second item, which was conducted by the Band’s deputy conductor Robert Wicks. This was the English Folk Song Suite by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a much loved classic of the wind band repertoire. Neil then returned to conduct a selection from My Fair Lady, which though written by Americans is based on the quintessentially English play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. After this John Dablin played the Prelude from The Victorian Kitchen Garden by Paul Reade, arranged for clarinet and band by Alan Mossford, the Band’s conductor for its first ten years. The first half ended with a selection of music from the films about that fictional English hero James Bond.

George Frederick Handel may have been born in Germany, but he came to England as a young man, took English nationality, and soon became a great favourite of the English. Among his works still popular today is the Royal Fireworks Music, written for King George II to accompany fireworks in 1749 celebrating the end of the War of Austrian Succession. A suite from this music opened the second half. This was followed by an arrangement of Nimrod from the Enigma Variations by the great English composer Edward Elgar. After this Robert Wicks returned to conduct The Beatles, Echoes of an Era.

Derek Bourgeois (b. 1941) is a prolific English composer. He wrote his quirky Serenade in 1965 to be played at his own wedding, and it makes an entertaining piece arranged for wind band. After this the concert ended with the second set of English Dances by Malcolm Arnold. Every tune in the Dances sounds like it is an English folk tune, but in fact they are all original and were written by Malcolm Arnold himself.

The audience seemed to have enjoyed the concert, their applause was sufficient to justify an encore so the band repeated Nimrod by Elgar. Let’s hope the concert was successful in raising funds for Scannappeal.

The weekend of 5th to 7th March was the occasion for another highly successful Band Development weekend. We first held one in February 2008, and one was scheduled for February 2009 but was cancelled at the last minute because of the weather, so this year we decided to hold it in March instead. The idea is not only to have a weekend of intensive rehearsal under a guest conductor, but also a chance to socialise and get to know one another better.

On the Friday evening members of the Band arrived at The Lambert Arms in Aston Rowant. Following an excellent dinner we set up in the ‘Oxford’ conference room and played a few pieces, not easy when you’€™ve just dined well! Our guest conductor this year was James Marshall from the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, assisted by Duncan Stubbs, who has just had to step down from being Director of Music for the Band, but was nevertheless keen to come for part of the weekend.

Then on Saturday morning we played through more pieces (a total of 12 in all) and James and Duncan selected six for us to work on for a “concert” on Sunday afternoon. These included music in a wide variety of styles, such as a selection from The Wizard of Oz, and Thames Journey by Nigel Hess, which is a vivid picture in music of the Thames from its source to the North Sea.

The social aspect came to the fore after Saturday evening dinner, as Martin Brown organised entertainment with quizzes and karaoke on a PlayStation 3, displayed on the big screen by the conference room projector.

Sunday was another day of hard work trying to perfect the chosen pieces, then in the afternoon we performed them in a concert to an audience of a couple and their two young children, presumably guests in the hotel who were curious about what we were doing. They did seem to appreciate it, especially Roller Coaster, a vivid description of a ride on a roller coaster written by Otto M. Schwarz, complete with screams!

And so, all too soon, it was time to return home, tired because we had been working hard, but exhilarated because we had achieved so much under James and Duncan’s expert guidance. The 12 hours of rehearsal over the weekend is the equivalent of nearly 6 weekly rehearsals, but without the gaps in between to forget things. I’m sure the results will be clearly evident in the Band’s performances over the coming year.

Here is a complete list of all the music we played.

When Robert Wicks first mooted the idea of playing 3 movements of Pineapple Poll in our January concert I was extremely doubtful. It’s not an easy work at all, two of the chosen movements are fast and lively, with no respite, and the slow movement requires an enormous amount of control to play softly and gently.

But we worked at it, and on the day it went extremely well. The occasion was a concert at Holy Trinity Church, Penn Street, near Amersham, on 23rd January. We first played there last year, and the the audience enjoyed it enough that we were invited back again.

The concert opened with the theme from the 1960s TV series Thunderbirds, arranged by Philip Sparke. Other items in the first half included two numbers played by a saxophone trio, Black and White Rag, Puszta by Jan van der Roost, and Summertime by George Gershwin to remind everyone that summer will come, one day.

As well as Pineapple Poll the second half included the Flower Duet from Lakmé, beautifully played again by Vanessa Owen and Annalie Ibison. Then the last few pieces were in a more big band, swing style: Caravan, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, featuring the trumpets, and In the Miller Mood, arrangements of Glenn Miller hits featuring the saxophones. Finally the concert was rounded off by the Radetzky March. Or it would have been, but in response to the applause, and as a memento to the snow earlier in the month, the band played Sleigh Ride as an encore.

Will we be invited back again next year? I hope so, if only for the delicious cakes we were treated to in the interval.

I am delighted to report that we have had no less than three applications for the post of Director of Music. Each of them have been invited to come and rehearse the band in the coming weeks, and the band members will then make their choice. All three are highly talented people, so this looks promising for the future of the band.

The Band’s Christmas concert this year was held in the beautifully restored surroundings of Aylesbury Methodist Church. Although we have played here once before for a wedding, this was something of an experiment to see if the church was suitable to become a regular venue for our concerts, and on the whole the answer seemed to be yes. Admittedly the band was a tight fit in the chancel, not helped by the large Christmas tree at the back, but after some juggling the whole band managed to squeeze into place. There are certainly advantages for the audience, the church is more accessible than St Mary’s, there are no pillars in the way to obscure the audience’s view of the band, and those who wished were able to sit in the balcony to get an even better view. Rod Wynne-Powell was on hand again to take photos, which you can see here.

The concert opened with Fanfare and Hark the Herald Angels Sing, a quirky modern arrangement of the Christmas carol by Chip Davis for the group Mannheim Steamroller^[Wikipedia] (who are very popular in the USA but virtually unknown in this country). This was followed by Alfred Reed’s Festive Overture, then Black and White Rag and the four Gypsy Dances Puszta by Jan Van Der Roost. Vanessa Owen and Annalie Ibison played the Flower Duet from Lakmé arranged for flute and oboe by James Curnow. After Christmas Recollections and a carol sung by the audience, the first half ended with A Vaughan Williams Christmas.

After the interval the second half opened with Troika by Prokofiev, and New York by Nigel Hess. Another new piece came next: Good Swing Wenceslas arranged by Sammy Nestico. A quartet from the sax section then played three entertaining pieces, Ceilito Lindo, Solitude by Duke Ellington, and Five foot two, eyes of blue. The old favourite, Carol of the Drum was followed by the 3rd movement of Pineapple Poll, Broadway Showstoppers, and of course, White Christmas. After another carol sung by the audience the concert ended with Sleigh Ride and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

Near the end of the concert, conductor Robert Wicks publicly thanked the members of the band and the committee for all their work in the past year, and John Dablin presented him with a gift in recognition of all the hard work he had done over the Christmas season conducting the band in the absence of Duncan Stubbs.

So ended another year. In January rehearsals start for the next concert in Penn Street, and it will be time to start preparing for another Band Development Weekend in March, as well as the Spring concert. So there is much to look forward to in 2010.

On Saturday 5th December the Band returned to Fairford Leys (a district of Aylesbury) to provide music for carols. As the band set up under an arcade at the side of Hampden Square there seemed to be a distinct lack of people come to sing, but shortly before the start at 5 o’clock a crowd appeared from nowhere, many carrying umbrellas against the gentle rain. The band played We Need a Little Christmas, White Christmas, and Sleigh Ride and then accompanied the crowd in half a dozen carols.

Then on Sunday the 6th came the annual Mayor’s Carol Service in St Mary’s Church. For some reason the procession of the Mayor and dignitaries from the town centre was late, meaning the whole service was 20 minutes late starting. The band shared the accompaniment of carol singing with the organist, playing alternate verses and joining together in the last, so when the organist started playing one carol in the wrong key it caused considerable alarm. Some frantic signalling from conductor Robert Wicks alerted the organist to his mistake, and he performed an acrobatic improvisation before the next verse to modulate into the correct key!

The next Friday, 11th December, it was Wendover’s turn for carol singing. It was a cold but dry evening as the band set up on the Manor Waste in Wendover High Street. A good sized crowd soon arrived and spent the next hour singing 15 carols accompanied by the band. The event was organised by Wendover Parish Council, who must have been quite pleased with the good turnout.

And so to Waddesdon to play slightly premature Christmas music at Waddesdon Manor. The weather forecast predicted showers, and they were right if your definition of showers is heavy rain for 20 minutes every half an hour. Last year we played in the stables, but the recent downpours had left them flooded, so we played outside the main house, under a permanent gazebo that serves in summer to protect al fresco diners from the sun. Today it protected us from the rain. Amazingly it also protected some of the audience, while others stood under umbrellas to listen. Only in England…

The band played a mixture of Christmas carols, Christmas music such as White Christmas, and some of the other pieces we have out at the moment, such as Black and White Rag and Broadway Showstoppers. Considering the awful weather we were lucky to have an audience at all, but those who did stop to listen certainly seemed to appreciate the band, applauding each number. If we’re invited back next year, let’s hope it will at least be dry!