Welcome to Friary Diary issue 114 - a monthly round up of news about the Friary Brass Band.
BOOKHAM CONCERT:
As anticipated (last year it was sold out), our concert at St Nicolas Church, Bookham – ‘Bookham on Broadway’ - is proving very popular. Only a few tickets are left, so if you’re intending to come along, please don’t leave it any longer to book!
Tickets are available from Nick Garrett on 01372 458918 or please visit
BRITISH BANDSMAN CONCERT:
And just a reminder, tickets for our British Bandsman series concert at Reading Town Hall on Saturday 19th October at 2.00pm are now on sale. We are delighted to be part of this prestigious concert programme so please support us. Please visit whatsonreading.com to book your tickets (£17.50; under 18s £6).
LATEST SIGNING:
Peter Fewster has been playing trombone with the Band for some months and we are delighted to announce his formal signing with Friary. Peter started brass banding with the Shepherd Group Youth Band before moving to York RI Band in the championship on second trombone. Whilst at university he played solo trombone for Fishburn Brass Band. He had also played in a variety of other ensembles, from orchestral to jazz to pit bands in Durham and York.
Having recently moved south, he is excited to play at the highest level with Friary Band. "I have thoroughly enjoyed and been impressed playing with the band, and I am delighted to join officially.”
Band Chairman David Wicks added: “Peter has been helping us out for several months now. He’s a great player and we’re so pleased to have him formally on board now, particularly as we prepare for the National Finals.”
CAT & RUTH'S 100KM CHALLENGE:
Friary bass player Cat Whittingham-Smith is taking on the extreme challenge of the Thames Path 100km Ultramarathon next Saturday, together with her former Irish Guards’ colleague Ruth Lewis, a clarinet player. Cat explains: ‘We like to try and fundraise at least once a year together. The past couple of years we’ve done the Shine Marathon Walk for Cancer Research. This year we decided to up the ante and enter into a 100km run for Helen & Douglas House, an absolutely amazing charity. Neither of us has ever run any sort of ultra distance so it’s definitely a new challenge!’
Helen & Douglas House is a children’s hospice which looks after terminally ill children and their families. Cat and Ruth’s target of £800 could fund two visits to the penguins, which is an activity the children absolutely love to do around Christmas. Helen & Douglas House also helps provide care to families in their own home, with £50 funding a two-house session for a child with one of the Outreach Nurses, all the way to £500 providing end of life care of a child in their own home. For more information about the charity, please visit https://www.helenanddouglas.org.uk/
If you would like to help Cat and Ruth along the way by supporting such a worthy charity with a donation, however small, their JustGiving page can be found at https://www.justgiving.com/page/catherine-and-ruth-100km
NATIONAL FINALS:
It’s now less than a month to go before Friary once again returns to the Royal Albert Hall to compete against 19 other top bands in the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain. This year’s test piece is Peter Graham’s Harrison’s Dream, previously used as the Nationals’ test piece back in 2000 when the winning band was Cory. The music reflects on horologist John Harrison’s dream of building a clock so accurate that mariners could use it to calculate their longitude and he is credited with inventing the first practical marine chronometer. His story is also told in Dava Sobel’s book Longitude. Rehearsals are in full swing.
PUBLIC BENEFIT
As mentioned last month, I was invited back to the nursing home where my elderly aunt is a resident, to run another brass band music session on the theme of ‘A Night at the Proms’, to align with the nursing home’s weekly activity programme. The audience had doubled in numbers from the previous session! With a few slightly ’heavier’ pieces than I’d usually pick, I wasn’t entirely sure how well the session was going at first. However, the ‘Last Night’ favourites, Jerusalem, Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory certainly were a success, with some rousing singing and lots of smiling faces. I managed to slip in Friary’s Autumn Leaves (thinking about the trees in Hyde Park opposite the Royal Albert Hall at the time of the national finals!) as one of the fillers to break up the more serious items too.
I’ve been invited back again, in November to run another session, this time to mark Remembrance. Luckily I already have a programme prepared which I ran at the home before Covid. As well as a few sombre pieces such as Nimrod, there are some wartime favourites including a Glenn Miller medley, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and a Friary 10 piece version of Every Time We Say Goodbye. Given the success of the singing, I’ve also managed to track down some military band recordings of We’ll Meet Again and The White Cliffs of Dover, which I hope will engage everyone and send them away with smiles on their faces.
RANKING NEWS:
As at 1st September, Friary stands at 28th in the world in the long-awaited 4barsrest.com updated table. In the brassstats.com table, Friary is ranked 25th.
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