It is with great pleasure that we welcome Neil Crowe as a member of Lydney Town Band on Bb Bass. Neil, a previous member of the band, was part of the team that helped build the successful Lydney Training Band. It's great to have him back in the Lydney Band family.
(L-R: Thomas Dunne, Musical Director, Neil Crowe and Kevin Ford, Chairman) This weekend, we're packing up our instruments and taking a trip over to Stroud! Lydney Town Band will be performing at Stratford Park Bandstand on Sunday from 2:30pm! Bring a picnic and a blanket and settle in for an afternoon of music and entertainment! If you get there early, you can take the opportunity to visit the Stratford Park Arboretum - said to rival the nearby Westonbirt!
Enormous congratulations to our team who all successfully finished the Severn Bridge 10k! Thanks to all the marshalls and stewards who helped out along the way .
We also managed to hit our fundraising target of £1,000!!! Thank you so much to everyone who donated to our fundraiser! Big thanks also to everyone who shared it online on our behalf! Your help means that the Band is one step closer to getting a storage unit which will allow us to better utilise our facilities to continue the brilliant work of Lydney Training Band in developing the next generation of brass players! This Sunday, our team of intrepid runners from the band will be taking on the Severn Bridge 10k!
For two members of the team - Kerry and Louise, our Principal Cornet and Flugelhorn player respectively, this will be their very first 10k race and a massive achievement after months of training! We’re over 60% of the way to our fundraising target of £1,000 to help fund a new storage unit at the bandroom, which will help us make better use of our tuition spaces for the benefit of our aspiring musicians in our Starter Group and Training Band! If you’d like to sponsor the team, head on over to:https://www.justgiving.com/.../lydneytownbandcontainerfund Summer is nearly over but Lydney Town Band have got a great season of events planned to keep you entertained as the leaves turn brown and the evenings start to draw in!
Our Autumn 2023 programme kicks off on Sunday 3rd September with a bandstand concert in Stratford Park, Stroud - a rare trip to the other side of the river for us! On Saturday 23rd, we'll be supporting a fundraising event for the Forest Foodbank at St Mary's Church, Lydney. Following on from the success of last year's 130th Anniversary Concert, Lydney Town Band and Lydney Training Band will be returning to Lydney Town Hall to celebrate all the successes of the last twelve months! And finally, in November, the Town Band will be competing in the Wychavon Brass Festival and the GBBA Own Choice Contest, where Lydney Training Band will also be returning for the first time since 2019! Next month, we'll be bidding a fond farewell to our first trombone player, Alasdair, who is heading off to university. We've got a really exciting autumn programme of concerts and contests coming up, including our 2023 Celebration Concert at Lydney Town Hall!
If you or someone you know might be interested in joining us, please get in touch! We'd love to hear from you. There's just two weeks to go until the Severn Bridge 10k, where a team from the Band will be amongst the throngs of runners!
As part of the challenge, they're looking to raise money for a shipping container for the Band which will help us make better use of our bandroom and facilities. Anything you can give in sponsorship would be greatly appreciated! If you've already donated - thank you so much! If you'd like to give but maybe can't at the moment, you can still help out by sharing this link: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/lydneytownbandcontainerfund Enormous congratulations to Ben! Last week, he attended the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain Summer Course in Norfolk and won the Con Buckley Award for Percussion, which recognises the best all round percussionist on the course!
He's pictured here with Andrea Price, Musical Director of Wingates Band and former principal percussionist of Black Dyke Band. Previous winners of the award include Jordan Ashman, BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 2022, and Mark Landon, Principal Percussionist at Foden's Band. We had a fantastic time opening Scarr Brass Fest in the wonderful environs of Scarr Bandstand, this afternoon! It was great to see this event as well supported as ever! It was also lovely to be able to settle down afterwards with a cream tea and hear some cracking pieces from Severn Tunnel Band and Cinderford Band.
In spite of yesterday’s inclement weather, we were able to have a fabulous time performing at The Rising Sun Inn! Enormous thanks to the players who stepped in (some at the last minute and some straight from other engagements) to help the band out! If you missed us yesterday, you’ll have another opportunity this Sunday at Scarr Brass Fest, starting at 1:30pm at Scarr Bandstand
Earlier this week, our Starter Group (made up of players who are at the very start of their musical journey) and members of the Training Band paid a visit to Rodley House, Lydney!
It was great to be able to entertain the residents with a combination of solos and group performances, earning our aspiring musicians some valuable, confidence boosting, experience of playing in public! Many thanks to Rodley House for having us. There’s more to banding than just playing music…
During the pandemic, when the band couldn’t rehearse together, we were able to meet up for walks during the summer evenings. One of these walks has stayed on as a tradition for us - the annual post-rehearsal glow worm hunt! Although they’re not the easiest creatures to spot, they are fabulous to see (and very other worldly) when you do! This year we spotted a whopping six! Lydney's Outreach Programme to local schools continued last week with a visit to Lydney CofE School. Our planned ‘Proms in the Playground’ turned into ‘Proms in the Hall’ because of the weather but we were joined by Matilda, one of the pupils at the school, on cornet!
The school hall was buzzing, especially with the crowd pleasers Baggy Trousers and Sweet Caroline, before the finale of British Sea Songs, which just got faster and faster and faster, much to the kids’ delight. Last Friday, four members of the band - Dougie, Herbie and Sadie from the Training Band, and Ian from the Town Band, took grade exams. Under the tuition and guidance of Kerry Ford, they had been working for months to prepare pieces, learn scales, hone their understanding of music.
We're really pleased to announce that they all passed: Sadie - Grade Two, Herbie - Grade Four, Dougie - Grade Five, Ian - Grade Eight. Lydney Town Band are very pleased and proud to announce the wedding of their Musical Director, Thomas Dunne to the band's Solo Horn player, Samantha Ford. The couple first met at the National Youth Brass Band of Wales course in 2014 when Tom was Principal Euphonium and Samantha was First Horn. They met again, a year later, at the same course, hitting it off immediately and romance blossomed – love at first sight!
During the wedding ceremony, held in Gloucester, the couple made the obvious choice to have the music played by a brass band and called upon their many banding friends. Players were drawn from their own band Lydney Town, and friends from a host of other bands including Tredegar, Flowers, Filton Concert, Forest of Dean Brass, Bream and Pendennis. The bride’s processional music was ‘Can’t help falling in Love’ specially arranged by the band’s conductor Gareth Trott. The music also included a world premiere of a piece entitled ‘Dau Enaid yn Un’ (Two Souls as One), which was specially composed for the wedding by a close friend Malcolm Hannaford-Waddington. The best man and Master of Ceremonies was Sion Rhys-Jones, Tredegar Town Band's Principal Euphonium, who kept things organised with his commanding voice and jolly wit. A wonderful, enjoyable wedding day was made even more memorable by having friends from so many different bands getting together to celebrate Tom and Samantha’s special day. |
NewsNews stories from the Lydney Town and Training Bands, and Starter Group! Archives
May 2024
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