Posted on Sunday June 13th, 2021
It's been fantastic to finally be able to play together again in the last few weeks! Here's a little clip from this week's rehearsal of something we've been working on to hopefully perform out and about over the summer, featuring principal cornet Gregor on flugelhorn...🎺🎵
Posted on Sunday June 6th, 2021
Time for a quick look into the archives! Here's a newly released video from our Spring 2017 concert, A Night in the West End.🎭 Philip Sparke's piece Theatre Music is made up of 3 movements - a brisk and lively Overture, a tender Entr'acte and a bold and exciting Finale! As a band, we're big fans of Sparke's music, which always has great tunes and interesting challenges to keep us on our toes, and when we were considering programme ideas for this concert, this piece was a bit of a no-brainer! We hope that you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed playing it!🎵
Posted on Sunday May 30th, 2021
It's been great to get back to real-life rehearsals in the last two weeks and we've really been enjoying being able to make live music together again. Despite this, we're still really conscious of the risks of Covid-19 so we wanted to talk a little bit about the precautions that we're taking to help keep ourselves and our communities safe.😷
We've been working with St Dominic Savio School, where we rehearse, to ensure that we're able to rehearse in a Covid-Safe way. For example, we've moved from our usual rehearsal location to a bigger hall where it's easier to accommodate more people at socially-distanced spacing and where there's a better external airflow and we're also, of course, rehearsing with the doors and windows open (fortunately not too much of a problem in May!). We ask band members to consider taking rapid flow Covid tests and all members must have their temperature taken on arrival. Whilst it's not possible to play wind instruments with masks on, everyone needs to remain masked whenever they're not sat down and playing, and we also ask instruments that vent condensation (those pesky brass ones) to ensure that they have a towel on the floor to catch any drips!
The music for the rehearsal is put out on people's chairs before they arrive to minimise the need to move around the room and at the end of the rehearsal, everyone puts their music back in a box which we can leave to quarantine before anyone touches it. Players bring their own music stands and the chairs which the school provide are only used by the band. We also take regular breaks (approximately every 20 minutes) with the whole band leaving the room in order for the rehearsal hall to be ventilated.
Hopefully these methods will help to keep everyone safe - we're immensely grateful to the school for working with us to make it possible to get back to rehearsals and you'll be pleased to know that we're also already working on some possible performances for later on in the summer - we'll keep you posted!🎶
Lovely to be back! Big thank you to everyone who has put so much time and effort into making rehearsals possible👏❤️👏
It’s so good to be back. Thank you everyone.
well done to all involved
It was so fab being back. Thanks everyone working so hard behind the scenes ❤️❤️
Is that someone joining in virtually as well? That's a lovely option to have.
Posted on Sunday May 23rd, 2021
This week, after 62 weeks without meeting face-to-face (that's 434 days or 10,414 hours!), we were absolutely thrilled to finally be able to hold our first physical rehearsal since last March! Whilst not everyone was able to be there just yet, it was absolutely fantastic to be able to come together to make music as an ensemble again and we thoroughly enjoyed playing as an actual real-life band - in fact, we were so 'happy', that we made this video to celebrate! Make sure you watch to the end to see the magical transition from virtual to real-life!🎵✨
PS...as you might imagine, we're taking a huge amount of care to follow current government guidance and have gone to great lengths to make our rehearsals Covid-safe - we'll talk a bit more about the measures we're taking and how we're doing this in a future post.
Nice to see Rebecca again. It's been a long time since Thames Wind.
Great work folks and thanks again for making it all happen 😃
Fabulous, well done team!! 🎼❤️
Professionals at the video editing now! Fantastic video. Well done.
Just fantastic! Owen and Gregor you are brilliant. Love it!
Another fabulous edit guys 😍😍😍 So pleased to be playing together again.
Love it! Great video and fab ending!! Hopefully there will be no more of this recording at home malarkey and we can keep playing together in person for the foreseeable future. 🎶🎶
Great job everyone. Fab video, great edit. So wonderful to be back IRL, it’ll be amazing when we can assemble the whole band. Also excellent clapping faces and dad dancing. 👏🏻😃
Great to see you all back together again. I liked the dancing!
Fantastic. Great start to a Sunday morning. Thank you !
Sounds great, and glad you get to rehearse in the flesh! One more week to wait for me in NL, then I will be happy to rehearse again too!
Fantastic edit as always Gregor and Owen! And so good to be back in person this week 😄
I agree! Thanks Owen Lloyd and Gregor Spowart. The video is great. And thanks to the committee for keeping it all going. Really appreciate all your hard work ❤
Brilliant job Owen and Gregor, love the ending(s)!
Love the video Woodley Concert Band 😊
Posted on Thursday May 20th, 2021
Put it in your diary! We've got a new video coming this Sunday and we're very excited about it because...well...you'll see why!✨😀✨
See you then - don't miss it!
Posted on Sunday May 16th, 2021
All being well, the coming week will see WCB starting to return to physical rehearsals for the first time in 14 months!🎺
In the meantime, there's just time for one more virtual recording, amazingly our 24th virtual collaboration since the start of the first lockdown! This version of Tom Jones classic Delilah features WCB players John (on trombone, tenor horn and euphonium) and Gregor (on trumpet...3 times!) and is a solo feature - the fiddly solo part was originally written for euphonium but our virtuosic euph player John decided to switch it round to trombone making it even more challenging for himself and spectacular to watch as the arrangement gets more complicated!🎵
Look out for the, um, very special (?!) key change!
Love this. Absolutely brilliant! Well done John and Gregor 👏👏
Another fabulous piece of work guys...whicih I will show my class tomorrow 😍I love the way you dressed differently in order to masquerade as triplets.
So brilliant!!! Great work John Deane, Gregor Spowart and tech team. Loved it!!
Nicely done guys.
Brilliant!
Love this
Posted on Sunday May 9th, 2021
As a community-spirited bunch, WCB were pleased to support Twyford based charity Understanding Dementia during the charity's recent online quiz. During the quiz, musical interludes were provided between rounds courtesy of some of the band's lockdown recordings on YouTube and the cry of "encore" was granted with a reprise of Another Day of Sun. It was a pleasure to support the charity as they promoted their work and was a good networking opportunity for the band - we hope to welcome some of their supporters to hear the band live in future. Understanding Dementia's work includes promoting a clear understanding of dementia, how it affects the person and how we can lessen its impact on those who live with it. The charity provides training for care workers, health professionals and family carers in a new and very simple approach that anyone can use.
You can find out more about the charity and it's activities here:
Understanding Dementia and lessening its impact
and find all of our lockdown recordings in a handy playlist here:
bit.ly/3h35Csu
Thank you so much for your support for our Quiz - with your help we raised £1250 for our work. Our next free course for family carers starts tomorrow - 10th May. Do see our website understandingdementia.co.uk/ for more information and to join our mailing list, or email [email protected] for details of our course for health and care professionals.
Posted on Sunday May 2nd, 2021
A couple of weeks ago, we added yet another new type of event to our busy online social calendar! An Evening With Rob Wiffin gave us a chance to get to know friend of the band Rob a bit more and find out about his fascinating career as a trombonist, Principal Director of Music for the Royal Air Force and Professor of Conducting at the Royal Military School of Music (did you know - he taught our MD Claire everything she knows about conducting...or at least a lot of it!).🎼
The band have been working with Rob for a number of years (he's pictured here conducting our workshop back in 2013) and we have enjoyed playing a wide range of his compositions and arrangements, so it was great to get to know him better, as well as to hear some very entertaining anecdotes about some of the hairier moments from his past, guided by Claire as our excellent compère! Huge thanks to Rob for taking the time to talk to us - we had a great time and there may well be more events like this in the future!
Posted on Sunday April 25th, 2021
One of the things that we love most about our brilliant Director of Music, Claire, is the passion and enthusiasm that she brings to the role - whether it's a complex piece of carefully crafted wind band music for the National Concert Band Festival or a big cheesey pop medley, she always makes our rehearsals interesting, engaging and fun and gets the best out the music and us! 🎵
Usually, this isn't something that it's very easy to capture and share with you but one of the fringe benefits of having to move our rehearsals online is the ability to take screenshots of what's going on...so here, from just one of our rehearsals, and with Claire's (slightly reluctant!) permission, is a little collage of some of the many faces that make our rehearsals so entertaining and enjoyable! 🎼🎺🥁
PS...Huge congratulations to Claire from all of us on her recent commission in the rank of Captain as Director of Music in her 'other' job with the British Army! We're delighted for her and pleased that the Army have decided to upgrade her to the role that we offered her 2½ years ago!🏆
Posted on Sunday April 18th, 2021
One of the (few!) positives about a year without real-life music-making has been the opportunities that it's offered us to do things that we'd never have done pre-Covid.🎵 So here, by way of an example, is a fantastic jazzy little version of African-American spiritual Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (wait 'til the tempo gets going after the 19 second intro!), transcribed for brass quintet...from a funky big band arrangement...and performed by two trumpets, a trombone and two saxophones! We hope you like it!😃🎺🎷
Fabulous guys! Alison won the prize for playing the most bars.
Wonderful start to the day! Hats off to the tech wizz on the video.
I love it!
Sounds fantastic. Well done 👏
Absolutely fantastic
Awesome guys, as always. Well done all 👏👏
Great job guys 👏🏻😃
Fantastic!
Posted on Sunday April 11th, 2021
Whilst it's great that we're gradually moving back towards real-life physical rehearsals and concerts, there's still a huge amount of uncertainty for us and other musical groups about exactly what, when and where we'll be able to perform in public this year.🎺🥁🎷
Despite this, we're already working hard to think about what pieces we might be able to play to celebrate a return to live music-making and we've all come up with plenty of suggestions for our music group and Director of Music Claire to consider, covering everything from Mozart to ABBA, and from Elgar to Stevie Wonder! Whenever we get to play live, we'll be ready!🎵
In the meantime, if you've got any suggestions for what you'd like to hear us play, feel free to pop them in the comments and we'll make sure we include them in our considerations!
Thank you for the music!? 🤔😜
Posted on Sunday April 4th, 2021
Happy Easter!🐰🥚🍫
This week, we held the sixth round of our virtual Great WCB Bake Off with, of course, a theme of Easter! We had no less than 10 entries which were, to be honest, some of the least healthy bakes we've ever seen, featuring lashings of chocolate, heaps of marshmallows and an awful lot of Cadbury's Mini Eggs!
Entries ranged from traditional Hot Cross Buns to an Easter Cheesecake and from Creme Egg Brownies to a highly controversial savoury dish (take a look through the photos to find out what it was...) and it was a tough decision for our expert judging panel! In the end, however, they awarded Star Baker🏆 to Sue for her amazing Easter Garden scene (click on the photo to see what all the constituent parts were made from) and 2nd place to Alison for her delicious-looking Hot Cross Buns. Steve also received an honourable mention for his lovely-looking Easter cake - his first ever attempt at baking a cake!
All in all, there were some amazing Easter-themed creations and we had a really fun evening finding out what everyone had made and hearing the stories behind their creations! We hope that you have a great Easter and we'll see you next week for a little insight into our virtual rehearsals...!🎵
Congratulations Sue. Beautiful, up to your usual yummy confections standard👌
Well done again WCB......which obviously stands for We Can Bake !🐥🐣🥮🍰
Posted on Sunday March 28th, 2021
📣BONUS VIDEO! When our brilliant percussionist Katie recorded Another Day of Sun, she was kind enough to film from no less than 5 different camera angles!🎥 So...we decided that the least we could do to showcase her amazing drumming was to make an extra video with full-on flying sticks, swinging cymbals and that unmistakeable cowbell!🎵
PS...Whilst we had sheet music for the piano, trumpet and bass parts, there was no music for the drums so Katie wrote her part from scratch - what a star!🌟
Love it. Thank you for continuing to do these videos. They put a smile on my face every time. X
Brilliant love this tune.
That’s brilliant!
Thanks Katie!
Fabulous as always Katie! X
Amazing work Katie Tyler 👏👏👏❤️
Fantastic!
Amazing!!
Posted on Sunday March 14th, 2021
Time for something lively! La La Land is one of the most iconic musical films of recent years and its Oscar-winning score is filled with memorable songs and toe-tapping tunes!🎵
Never shy of taking on a challenge, here's the awesome WCB rhythm section with the brilliant opening number to the film, Another Day of Sun (with a little help from trumpeter Gregor too!).🌞 It might not feature the glamorous skyline of LA or people dancing on cars but we still reckon it's pretty spectacular - we hope you like it!🎹🎸🥁
Love this. Well done all. Going to be humming this all day now! 🎶🎶
Fab job! Something lovely and sunny ☀️
Love it, especially the concentration from the bass player - I can relate! Keep it up!
Brilliant, well done!
Nice keys John 👍
Love this.
Posted on Sunday March 7th, 2021
Today marks exactly a year since our Spring 2020 concert, "Lights, Camera Action," our last performance before it became clear just how serious Covid was and we entered lockdown. This week, we held our first ever virtual AGM and whilst it's been a very unusual year for the band, we were amazed by just how much we've managed to accomplish despite not being able to meet up. In 2020...
🎬 We made 43 videos, including...
👏 8 Clap For Our Carers doorstep performances,
🎥 5 full band virtual pieces,
🎞️ 20 solo, duet and small group pieces,
🎄 12 daily Christmas videos,
🎅 and 6 special videos to support Addington School's Christmas concert.
We also managed 2 carolling sessions in Woodley where some of us actually saw each other in real life and got to remember what playing together was like - we were even vaguely in tune!🎵
In addition to the musical side, we managed to keep our busy social calendar pretty active with...
🍺 8 virtual trips to the pub,
❓ 13 online quiz nights, hosted by 7 different band members (and their families),
🍰 3 rounds of The Great WCB Bakeoff,
🌻 plus a sunflower growing competition and
🎳 the WCB Virtual Bowling Championship.
With no concerts after the Spring Concert, the only way to measure how many people we've reached with our music making is in terms of social media stats and when we tallied up the numbers for this, we were pretty chuffed too! Since the start of the first lockdown...
🧑🤝🧑 Our videos have been shown to people a total of 89,353 times.
⏲️ They've been viewed for a total of 23,144 minutes (or over 385 hours)...
👍 ...and received 15,211 clicks, likes and shares!
We're absolutely blown away by how many people have enjoyed our music so if you're one of them, thanks very much! We've got more new virtual music coming up in the not-too-distant future and maybe...just maybe...we'll be able to see you in real life somewhere later this year!🎶