We’re incredibly proud of our Musical Director, Thomas Dunne for being shortlisted for this year’s Brass Bands England Conductor of the Year Award! Alas it wasn’t to be but congratulations to Katrina Marzella Wheeler for her win! 
​
Thanks to Samantha for this lovely photo!

We’re really excited to be able to share the poster for next month’s Celebration Concert being held at Lydney Town Hall on Sunday 19th October! (…just under four weeks away ).
​
As well as an evening of incredible music from both bands, we’ll also be marking the 20th anniversary of Lydney Training Band! Twenty fabulous years of introducing the joys of music and brass banding to aspiring new players from around the Forest of Dean!

​A few photos from Lydney Training Band’s performance at the St Joseph’s Church fete yesterday!
Our thanks to Julia, Roger, Louis and Ade for helping out!

​Throwback Thursday and a special concert announcement.

On Sunday 19th October, we will be holding our annual Celebration Concert at Lydney Town Hall. This year, we'll be marking the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Lydney Training Band, which for last two decades has introduced hundreds of aspiring new players to the joys and community of brass banding.

We'll hear performances from both Lydney Town Band and Lydney Training Band before a fabulous Massed Bands Finale! Tickets will be available on the door (Adults - £8, Concessions - £5, Family - £20). Doors open at 5pm for a 5:30pm start.
​
Photo: Lydney Training Band on the steps of the Lydney Market Cross in 2010!

What an evening!!! We’re so pleased to say that our Brass and Organ Concert was a phenomenal success! Thank you so much to St Mary’s Church for hosting us last night and to everyone who came along!

Shout out to Tom for his incredible solo performances, and to Samantha for her gorgeous Tenor Horn solo in Bless the Lord, O My Soul. Congratulations to David for the debut of his newest piece Nightfall
Special thanks to Emily and Chris for helping out, and to James for stepping in as Repiano Cornet for the evening! Thanks to Emma and Krysten for these great photos!

In order to put on a Brass and Organ Concert, you need a brass band and an organist…enter Ian, our Repiano Cornet! 

Over the last six months, Ian has worked tirelessly in preparation for this concert. He has arranged, written and adapted parts, practised at home, practised at St Mary’s, even found a little Cornish church to practice in whilst on holiday in July. His dedication and commitment to making sure that this concert was a success has been incredible - we are beyond grateful to him! Thank you Ian!!!

Shout out to James, who stepped up from Third Cornet to cover the Repiano parts.

This weekend, Lydney Town Band have got their Brass and Organ Concert!
​ 
Next weekend, Lydney Training Band will be providing musical entertainment at the fete being held at St Joseph’s Church, Lydney! They’ll be there from 11:15am - don’t miss out!

There's just two days to go until our very special Brass and Organ Concert at St Mary's Church! The climax of our show will be the epic finale of Saint-Saëns' Third Symphony, also known as his 'Organ Symphony'.

So today, we present the last of our mini-series of composer profiles: Camille Saint-Saëns.

Saint-Saëns was a French composer and musician, born in 1835. He was identified as a musical prodigy from a young age and when he was just 13, Saint-Saëns was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire. At the age of 18, his Symphony No. 1 (initially published anonymously) was premiered in Paris. He was supported in his early career by the likes of Rossini and Hector Berlioz, whilst Franz Liszt on hearing Saint-Saëns play the organ declared him to be "the greatest organist in the world". Saint-Saëns himself was a supporter of modern composers of the time such as Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann, and went on to teach Gabriel Fauré.

Saint-Saëns' list of musical compositions includes a whole host of operas, symphonies, piano concertos and other works of chamber music. Some of his best known and most played compositions include ‘Danse macabre' and 'The Carnival of the Animals' - you might remember that our Musical Director Thomas Dunne, took inspiration from the latter, when he wrote 'Swan Road', which formed part of our prize winning set at the 2022 Wychavon Festival of Brass.

To find out more about the life and music works of Camille Saint-Saëns, head over to: https://www.aso.org/artists/detail/camille-saint-saens

One of the highlights of this weekend's Brass and Organ Concert will the solo performance given by our Musical Director, Thomas Dunne. He will be performing a piece written for Euphonium, accompanied by the church organ, by the subject of today's composer profile: Cait Nishimura.
​
Cait Nishimura is a Japanese Canadian composer based in Ontario, Canada. She is most well known for her work composing concert band music, with her compositions widely inspired by nature. In 2017, she won the Canadian Band Association's composition prize and is now an Associate Composer at the Canadian Music Centre. As well as being an avid musician, she is an environmental activist who has used her music to advocate for conservation awareness.

For more information about Cait, head over to: https://caitnishimura.com/

Next up in our mini-series of composer profiles: Morten Lauridsen
​
On Saturday, we'll be performing O Magnum Mysterium, a beautifully delicate yet powerful piece of music which is perfectly suited to the acoustics of St Mary's Church. The piece was written in 1994 by the American composer, Morten Laurdisen, and based on a Gregorian chant.

Born in 1943, Morten is a native of the Pacific North West, growing up in Washington state. Starting in 1967, he spent 52 years teaching at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California. Over the course of his writing career over one million copies of his scores have been sold and his music has been performed around the world including at the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall. Five albums of his published works have had Grammy Award nominations and he has received honorary doctorates from institutions including the University of Aberdeen, King's College London and Oklahoma State University.

In 2007, Morten received the National Medal of Arts, the highest artistic award in the United States, in recognition of his "composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power, and spiritual depth".

For more information on Morten Lauridsen, head over to: 
https://www.mortenlauridsen.net/MortenLauridsen.html

O Magnum Mysterium is not to be missed - there won’t be a dry tear in the house! ​

Ahead of this Saturday's Brass and Organ Concert, we're going to be taking the opportunity to showcase some of the composers whose work will be featured at the concert

First up: Dame Ethel Smyth - composer and suffragette!

Born in 1858, Ethel was determined from an early age to devote herself to music. At the time, the musical talents and contributions of women were routinely undervalued and ignored in deference to their male contemporaries. It is notable that Ethel's musical career coincided with other British composers of the time such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar, but it is only in the last decade that her own work has begun to be rediscovered, recognised and reguarly performed.

Amongst her musical achievements, in 1903, her second opera Der Wald was the first by a female composer to be performed at The Metropolitan Opera in New York and remained as such until 2016! In total, Smyth wrote a total of six operas and on Saturday, the band will be playing the finale of the Overture from The Wreckers, Smyth's third opera, one of her best known and critically appreciated works. Although she received a Damehood in recognition of her services to music in 1922, Ethel regularly used psuedonyms to avoid biased criticism of her musical work and struggled to break into the mainstream.

Ethel was also a prominent suffragette, joining the movement in 1910. She wrote The March of the Women in 1911, which quickly became a rallying cry for activists. She even spent time in prison after engaging in a window smashing campaign at the Houses of Parliament alongside Emmeline Pankhurst! 

Ethel Smyth died in 1944. Although she never married, she had a long-term relationship with the American writer Henry Brewster, as well as a series of relationships with women and a seemingly accidental engagement to Oscar Wilde's brother, Willie!

There is so much more to know about Ethel Smyth (check out the links below) and we can not wait to perform her work on Saturday evening. It'd be amazing to see you there.

https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/ethel-smyth-composer-suffragette/
https://www.ethelsmyth.org/about/biography
​https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/people/musicians/dame_ethel_smyth/