We would love to welcome former players and friends of the band at our 20 years celebration. We are celebrating 20 years of sponsorship from Shepherd Group this year and on September 21st we continue the celebrations with a dinner dance at York Racecourse in the Dante Suite in the Ebor Stand.
The dinner starts at 7:30 pm and ends round about midnight. There is car parking available for those who are driving.
The dinner is a 3 course meal with Coffee and the festivities continue with a disco. There are of course options available for the vegetarians who want to attend. The cost of the meal is £40 per person and tickets can be purchased via a direct bank payment to the Band account, the details you will need are as follows:
Account name : Shepherd Building Group Brass Band
Sort code : 40-52-40
A/c number : 00035218
When making a payment please put use the code PTY20 followed by your name so we can identify who is coming.
Please make payments before the 31st August 2024. If things change, he we can offer refunds for payments made before 31st August, however because we need to place the orders for food, we can’t offer refunds after August 31st.
We got some really special news this week when we were informed that a project the band is running alongside the National Centre for Early Music was shortlisted for a prestigious Brass Bands England award. The awards is the Band Project of the Year and the project shortlisted is “I Can Play with Brass Roots”.
I Can Play is a project that is run through the NCEM that seeks to break down barriers to making music for the D/deaf community. Brass Roots is the beginners band within the Shepherd Group Band organisation.
The Shepherd Group Brass Bands have always been an inclusive and welcoming organisation and when Sean joined the band, he suggested the idea of introducing children from the D/deaf community into the band. When this was suggested at a committee meeting, we jumped at the chance and shortly after our first new players from I Can Play joined Brass Roots and the project has grown from there onwards.
Anyone who came to our performances of The Snowman in December last year will remember Sean Chandler our Principal Cornet player leading the whole audience in signing to “Merry Christmas Everyone”. We then had some of our “I Can Play” ambassadors on stage at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre Christmas concerts leading the audiences there in signing along to the band.
It would be something special to see the award go to our I Can Play with Brass Roots team. Sean Chandler and Audrey Brown are at the forefront of this, but we have players from Senior Band along for the rehearsals sitting in with the players and guiding them so it really is an organisation wide effort. If you have a couple of minutes spare, please drop into the Brass Bands England website, and vote for this great project.
Of course, this is just one of the many outreach projects the band has initiated. We also have the monthly Project Band where players from across North Yorkshire and some from further afield come along to rehearse more challenging pieces of music. This is another idea that is being picked up by bands across the country and we are pleased to see our ideas for broadening participation being used nationally.
Tickets are selling fast for our celebration of 20 years with Shepherd Group as our sponsors. This is a rare chance to hear the premiere of a new piece of music composed specially for all the bands to play together. Don’t miss out on this one
2024 sees the 20th anniversary of our relationship with Shepherd Group as our sponsors. Over that time we have benefitted from first class rehearsal facilities and have grown the band organisation to something we are all justifiably proud of. So we are going to be celebrating.
We have commissioned Liz Lane to compose a piece of celebratory music that represents the bands and the company who support us. We have had several workshops where Liz has worked with each band storyboarding our feelings about the band, what we get from it as players and as a band family as a whole. Liz has also been allowed to visit the Portakabin production site where she drew inspiration from the machinery used in the production of the Portakabin product lines.
On May 21st, players from each of the bands in the organisation got together in the band room for the first full run through of the piece. Liz was there to hear the work and has gone away with a couple of ideas for final tweaks. It was great to hear this come together and there are a few real surprises in store for the audience.
This new composition will receive its premiere at the celebration concert the bands are holding at York Theatre Royal on June 29th 2024. Tickets are selling fast for this concert so you will need to head to the box office if you want to hear the performance. Tickets can be obtained via the link below.
Liz has worked with many bands and is composer in association with Grimethorpe Colliery Band, writing music for their recent Brass in Concert set performed at the Glasshouse in Gateshead. You can find out more about Liz and her approach to composition at her website.
On March 23rd, the Youth Band headed off to Cheltenham where they took part in the National Youth Championships of Great Britain. They competed in the Yamaha Performance Section where they faced a stiff challenge from well established bands like Elland Training Band and Pembrokeshire Music Service. They performed really well and played with confidence. Those of us who were unable to get to the performance on the day were able to watch the live stream of the contest on the WOBPlay platform and the recording will be available there should you wish to catch up.
The band were unlucky not to be in the prizes on the day, but came away with a Gold Award with the judges saying their performance was “based on the most solid of banding basics”.
A solid result and a really great performance. Well done.
This morning the Shepherd Group Brass Band hosted their first community “Project Band” rehearsal of 2024, opening our doors to over 40 local brass players. Led by expert MD Richard Wilton, and members of the Shepherd Group Senior Band, the rehearsal focussed on original competition repertoire for brass band, putting the spotlight on Peter Yorke’s The Ship Builders Suite and Goff Richards’ Hollywood! Thanks to everyone for coming down… See you again in February!!!
The weekend of the 9th and 10th of December saw the Senior Band kick off Christmas in real style. First of all a small group of players headed off to Bishopthorpe Club on December 9th to play carols at the annual Lollipop Christmas Party.
Lollipop is a charity supporting d/Deaf children and their parents and offers them a social environment where they can get together. The band have joined with the NCEM I Can Play programme over the last year to offer places in Brass Roots where d/Deaf children can take up playing a brass instrument. We are so excited to be part of this initiative and many members of the band have started learinig to sign using BSL as part of this. More on that Later!
Lollipop party flyer
Sean Conducting the band
Carols with the band
December 10th saw the senior band head to the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at the University of York where we put on three performances of The Snowman live. We were pleased to welcome Buffy Breakwell who accompanied us on the Grand Piano and Sophie Sylvester who provided stunning vocals in the iconic Walking in the Air. Thanks also have to go to York Concerts who partnered with us on both this and the recent Cory concerts and withouth whom we would have found this much harder to do.
We couldn’t just leave things there though and we added in a couple of extra pieces, the first was Into the Unknown from the film Frozen II and then we introduced something really new for the band. As we move into 2024, we are going to build on the work we have done with Lollipop and I can play and we are making our concerts more inclusive for our d/Deaf friends. The first step here is going to be the introduction of signing at our concerts. With this in mind our Principal Cornet player Sean Chandler, who is himself d/Deaf, taught the audience the BSL words for Merry Christmas Everyone having first explained the challenges faced in selecting the correct cutlery.
Paul meets his hero
Getting set up for a big day
Sound check time
Sean teaching the audience to sign Merry Christmas Everyone
Happy faces all round
The feedback we have had was that the audience participation in this number was a real highlight for everyone who was there, and Sean has confessed he was quite choked up to see the players in the band not only getting involved in the signing themselves, but also giving a round of applause using signing at the end of the piece.
Sean teaching the signing for Merry Christmas Everyone
Are you a Soprano Cornet player looking for a new challenge? We are on the lookout for someone to come and join us. We have a sensible mix of concerts and contests including thr Senior Cup in May and the Leicester Open in November. We also have collaborations with Cory Band and Grimethorpe Colliery Band over the next few months and will also be performing our popular version of The Snowman along with the original film in the run up to Christmas.
The band is renowned for our organisation with 5 bands under the Shepherd Group banner. We also enjoy first class rehearsal failities on the outskirts of York.
If this looks to be a challenge you would like to step up to, then please get in touch with the Senior Band MD Richard Wilton.
As many followers of the bands will be aware, Grace Pratt passed away earleier this year.
Grace is Mikes mother and banding was in her blood from an early age. Grace was a very talented cornet player herself and after marrying Ted Pratt her family could not fail to become brass players themselves.
The whole Shepherd Group Brass Band organisation wanted to pay their own tribute to Grace, someone who supported us through the years and who was a face we all looked out for in our concerts. The best tribute we can think of is to play the music she loved while raising fund for York Against Cancer, her chosen charity.
The concert will take place at 7:30 pm on September 29th 2023 at York Salvation Army Citadel and will feature the Shepherd Group Concert Band conducted of course by her son Mike and the Shepherd Group Senior Band. The music will be a celebration of Grace’s life and a reflection on the lives of those we have lost in recent years.
Tickets for this concert are avaialble via our Eventbrite page.
The weekend of the 1st and 2nd of July saw the concert band heading back down to London where they played on the bandstand in Regents Park. It turned out to be quite the weekend! As usual we had Erwin as our driver in a brand new coach, well 3 weeks old anyway, and he really was magnificent. Totally safe driving and giving us a verbal guided tour as we travelled through the capital and we saw just about every spectator entering Lords for the second test as we drove past the ground.
However the day before we got to our first job at Milton Keynes. It was supposed to be a birthday celebration for the museum and that is what they had originally booked us for but they moved it forward a week or so which meant that it was just an ordinary day there. Anyway although the “crowds” were just about in double figures we played our set and were truly appreciated by those there. Possibly 15 to 20 spectators but we raised £137. The Art of Rough Banding again came to the fore as the Bandstand wasn’t big enough and we therefore played in a slightly larger tent/marquee. Refreshment was provided at half time and the Band really started to become a family. A great start to our mini-tour.
The Museum is now home to the famous Concrete Cows and of course there were the obligatory poses posted on social media.
The next stage of the journey was on to our hotel in Watford. Everyone arrived safely but the computer at the Premiere Inn was misbehaving and our key cards were unable to be issued immediately. While waiting for the computer to be fixed, the band headed to the bar for a drink before sitting outside in the sunshine. Everything was relaxed until Mike said “is that a fire over the road?” We watched it for a short time and then when it started to get a little bit more serious Mike went into the hotel and told the staff about it who rang 999 and called the Fire Brigade. The band had a grandstand view of the fire service putting out the fire until the keycards were ready and the fire was well down. Once everyone was settled in, some of the band went into Watford for a meal and drinks. This was an excellent bonding evening for those who went and everyone eventually ended up back at the hotel bar for a couple of nightcaps only to see that the Fire Brigade had returned as the fire had broken out again.
Next morning everyone was up and after breakfast headed off to Regent’s Park. We set up on the lovely bandstand with the weather warm but a little windy and prepared to play. This bandstand is of course sadly the site of an IRA bombing back in July 1982, where a bomb was planted under the bandstand killing 7 musicians of the Royal Green Jackets.
We were joined by 4 other players for the day; Kate Lock, who had travelled down from Oxford that morning, Janey who had been part of The Youth Band triumph the day previously, a lady called Annie who knew Audrey and had played with us at the same concert in 2022. We were also joined by an old friend of Ken Stamp who had played with Rowntrees Band a long time ago and now lived in London. It’s nice to see the Shepherd Group Family still holds former players under its wings.
The concert was 2 great halves of typical Concert Band Music. The crowd was bigger that last year although the weather wasn’t as nice. The support and repose from the audience was exceptional. Applause, singing and dancing along to many pieces and at the very end a huge round of loud applause and cheering. A really positive response which was really well appreciated by the players on the stand. Mike has now been given a new nickname by the concert organiser, he’s Yorkshire’s Freddie Mercury. You have to wonder whether telling him this was a good idea; what could he possibly end up wearing at the JoRo concert this Christmas?
The Chairman of The Music Festival, Mark Elliot, spoke with David Gregg both at the end of the concert and in a ‘phone conversation this morning and both times he said he would like us back next year as well. To paraphrase his words “ your music is great, it’s just what our audience wants and our band is quite unique in its presentation of it”. Let’s hope he keeps his word.
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