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!🎶
Posted on Sunday February 28th, 2021
This week, it was great to hear that there's a prospect of being able to get back together for real-life rehearsals at some point in the next few months. It's clearly a little while off yet, but like all amateur music groups, we can't wait to be able to play music together again when it is is safe and sensible to do so.🎶
In the meantime, here's a brand new video from our Spring 2017 musicals concert, A Night in the West End. This is a brilliant arrangement of classic song Shall We Dance from 1951 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The King and I.💃🕺
youtu.be/4uwuqBfmGYw
Posted on Sunday February 21st, 2021
It's been almost a year since our last rehearsal and this week, we finally got back together...kind of!🎵 Our first ever Zoom rehearsal included scales, articulations and work on note lengths, just like a normal rehearsal, and we all started to remember what it's like to play music in the company of other people! Due to the technical limitations of Zoom (there's a huge d..e..l..a..y..), we unfortunately can only play with our microphones muted, but it was great for the band to be able make music with each other in some form again. MD Claire took us through the piece which we've selected for our next virtual recording, pointing out pitfalls and the way that different sections should be played, and we had a chance to try out fiddly passages and play along with a recording of the piece too.
Hopefully, it won't be *too* long before we're able to get back together in real life but in the meantime, it was fantastic to get back to some communal music-making and we hope to have another rehearsal soon!
Posted on Sunday February 14th, 2021
This week saw the band's 15th online quiz since the start of the first lockdown back in March last year.🤔💭⁉️ Different members of the band have been volunteering to set the questions and on Wednesday, Sue challenged us with some close-up photos of instruments.
Can you identify the instruments featured in these close-up photos? Bonus points are on offer for naming the make of each instrument!🎺🎻🥁
Posted on Sunday February 7th, 2021
OK...we confess that it's beginning to look a bit like we're mostly obsessed with cake round here but if we're honest, our recent band quizzes and trip to the virtual pub aren't quite so photogenic!
January's round of The Great WCB Bake Off opted for a healthy theme which this month's entrants interpreted in various different ways, from an egg-less, sugar-less, fat-less cake made with wholemeal flour, to Scottish Tablet, made with 'just' a kilogramme of sugar but served with salad and multivitamins!
After a rigorous judging process, the winner was judged to be Ursula's impressive Marmalade Cake, whilst commendations were awarded to Steve's Stuffed Peppers (for thinking outside of the box), Alison's Wholemeal Cake (for being super-healthy) and Gregor's Scottish Tablet (for the biggest boost to mood)...
To see all the entries, together with explanations of exactly how their creators claimed they were healthy, check out the photos...!🧁
(PS...sorry if you were hoping for some slightly more musical content from us! We're working on the musical side too but we're always proud of the fact that we're a pretty sociable bunch so we're proud of the fact that we're continuing with our band social scene despite the present circumstances!)
Posted on Sunday January 24th, 2021
Whilst last Monday might have been 'Blue Monday,' our musical offering for this week is anything but gloomy. It may be titled Blue but this quintet arrangement is a brilliant and jolly liittle piece featuring WCB trumpeter Gregor and multi-talented euphonium, trombone and horn player John.🎺 Composed by Thomas Gansch from incredible brass septet Mnozil Brass (look them up if you've not come across them - they're amazing), it's the ideal accompaniment for a laid-back Sunday...well...all except for a spectacular top Eb in the 1st trumpet part - make sure you stay tuned to catch it! We hope you like it...🎵
Love it guys. Well done. Will share that with my class again
I went to the evening concert at the National Championships a while back and whilst I waited in the foyer a group of musicians came in and started playing amongst the crowd. I was very close to them. They were rather loud at that range but I was transfixed and couldn't move. They kept swopping instruments and played perfectly. I found out later that they were the Mnozil Brass who had been playing on stage during the interval. They were told to move on by a steward eventually for 'annoying' the public. but what an experience! I have seen them twice since from the audience and I remember them getting a standing ovation at one event. It was either at the Hexagon or in the old Town Hall in Reading.
Very cool listening to this and watching the snow falling outside. Well done Gregor and John - another triumph!
Loved it well done Gregor and John.
Well done both - cracking!
Congrats - a super performance
Gansch gut !
YEAAAAAAAAAH
Well done Gregor and John.🎺📯