On Saturday evening, the Royal Marines will be streaming the recording of the Mountbatten Festival of Music which was staged at the Albert Hall on 7th March – this is a spectacular concert and I strongly urge everyone to watch it (on youtube). FOUR of our former Wind Band members are playing in it as well!!!!

(1) The Bands of HM Royal Marines – Home

Join the Massed Bands of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, Prince Harry and Meghan for the Mountbatten Festival of Music 2020. From the comfort of your living room, watch one of the finest military bands in the world perform an exciting programme of music including Tom Jones, Gloria Estefan, Two Steps From Hell and music from the critically acclaimed film Gladiator by Hans Zimmer. There truly is something for everyone!
This concert supports The Royal Marines Charity. Please do con…sider donating here https://www.justgiving.com/theroyalmarinescharity

For optimal picture and audio quality, please watch on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WV9YohPS6M

(1) The Bands of HM Royal Marines – Home See More

Don’t forget – 8pm this evening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ALSO … the National Youth Orchestra has asked that there is a repeat performance at 5pm tomorrow evening. The orchestra was meant to have been performing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in London tomorrow (and live on Radio 3) as part of the Beethoven 250 celebrations.

New piece this week – ‘Ode To Joy’. Don’t play ‘Over The Rainbow’ again!!!

Hope everyone is OK? A reminder that everyone should be practising, and I hope that loads of students (and possibly parents as well) played Over The Rainbow on their doorsteps last week!!! Well – time to go again, and please feel free to film it and post it to get the message out there!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OoatlU2E-uyiZcDJMFhoC2wgDK0TvFyq

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OoatlU2E-uyiZcDJMFhoC2wgDK0TvFyq

Having played the arrangement I posted this morning, the Butler Family decided it was rubbish so, after careful moderation of the comments fed back to me by (loving) family members, here is a link to the much better version, with parts transposed for all band instruments.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kq4E9B9k_xyUd5iUmlTgUWfkyq2LZDxU

Lets get everyone making music!!!!!!

This Thursday at 8pm, as part of the national ‘Clap For Our Carers’ campaign, various music organisations have called for musicians up and down the country to get their instruments (or voices) out and perform ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ from their doorstep. Below is a simple arrangement for up to 3 instruments (so the family can get involved if there are several players in your household) – next Thursday, the National Youth Orchestra and other youth music organisations have called on their members to play the ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – I will post a similar arrangement here prior to that.

Hello all – I hope everyone is ‘surviving’ during these trying times? Just a reminder to all students to keep practising so that whenever we do go back to school we can all hit the ground running both in terms of individual performance and the ensembles/bands.

To help with this, the Royal Marines are going to be streaming live masterclasses given by their top instrumentalists (11am on selected days) – I strongly urge students to try and get involved in the relevant sessions – details below:

With the exception of Junior Band and Choir, lunchtime Music rehearsals are cancelled this week in order to allow GCSE and A Level students time in the Stoller Suite to complete their composition coursework. The GCSE deadline is THIS Thursday.

Wind Band and Swing Band rehearsals go ahead as normal this coming week. If everyone who is able to do so can attend that would be fantastic as, for Wind Band in particular, we will start work on the additional repertoire for tour.

Swing Band’s next concert (at Holker) at the end of April has been cancelled.

TOUR – at the moment this is still going ahead.  In terms of insurance, we will only get our money back if the government extends the ban on school trips abroad OR Belgium refuses to accept group visits in July. We must, at the moment, continue as normal in terms of planning.

Marines Visit – we have now managed to get a refund from Premier Inn for Friday night, which has recouped £1800.  Obviously we are out-of-pocket in terms of income from the whole weekend as we would have expected to profit by about £1,500 (at least half of which would have been the raffle) – which does affect tour a little. However, we are investigating the possibility of the visit happening in early July.

Refunds – The Coronation Hall are dealing with refunds for Saturday night’s concert. For the Friday night event, if you would like a refund, please send your tickets in to the Music Office with your child and we will give a cash refund.Start writing or type / to choose a block

As you may well have heard by now, we have been forced to cancel the visit of the Royal Marines this weekend. The school knows only too well how much time and effort has been put in (as always) by the musicians in the Wind and Swing Bands over the past couple of months to prepare for the two concerts, but the advice we have received has left us in no option but to call them off.

The Marines very much see this as a postponement rather than a cancellation and we will be working hard over the next month or two to re-arrange a weekend.