We are delighted to receive the news that our application for a grant from the Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland has been successful!
Thanks to the generosity of their funders for the Give2 North Tyneside Community First Fund, we now the funds to take children and their parents/guardians to events such as the forthcoming Brass in Concert workshops at the Sage Gateshead, the Wansbeck Music Festival next March, and to organise workshops with other musicians.
Thank you!
We bid farewell to Mara and Angelos and their mother Katerina, from Balliol Primary School brass group as they leave to return with dad George to Greece. They have been absolute stars during their time with us, performing family solos twice at School performances.
Angelos was also our youngest member, being in year 2 when they joined in Sept 2016. His musical knowledge and his ability to convey it was quite impressive – for example when I asked the group if anyone knew what the “dot” after a minim meant?
His answer was “when a note is followed by a dot it has half the length added to it. So in this case the note is a minim which is 2 beats, but the dot means we add half of 2 beats which is 1 beat, making it 3 beats altogether”. A much better answer than I could have managed!
In recent weeks, Mara was a great help assisting with teaching the new starters by demonstrating notes on the cornet. She is developing into a very good player.
Katerina, Mara and Angelos performed with us at the Wansbeck Music Festival in March, and the recent North Tyneside’s Got Talent at Whitley Bay Playhouse, and we knew we could rely on them to play well and help the others.
On their last session they performed once more for us, including a rendition of Kumbaya.
We wish them every success and happiness for the future, and hope they will keep up their
music in Greece!
Wow! Our combined brass groups performed brilliantly at North Tyneside’s Got Talent at the Whitley Bay Playhouse last night.
24 children, 1 parent and 2 teachers played “Join the Band” and “Rock Around the Clock”. The numbers and the performance surpassed all our expectations, and we had many people coming up to us afterwards to say how good we were!
When you consider that 15 of the children have only been playing for 4 weeks, it is a fantastic achievement.
Well done everyone!
We’re off to perform at North Tyneside’s Got Talent at the Whitley Bay Playhouse (Marine Avenue, NE26 1LZ) on Tuesday 10th October, 6:30-8:30pm!
We will have a combined band from the 3 Schools playing our new piece “Join the Band”, and a favourite from last term “Rock Around the Clock”.
We will pay for one ticket for an adult to accompany each child performing. Additional tickets for family and friends are £6 each. In all cases please fill in a form and return to us via the School (see our Letters home page) so we know who’s coming. Please bring children to the Playhouse by 6:15pm at the latest so we can be set up ready to perform at the start.
It’s going to be a brilliant experience!
We’re pleased to welcome a total of 21 new starters to our after-school brass groups, joining the 17 returners from last year.
Balliol has the biggest take up with 9 children from year 4 joining. One of the new joiners already has two older sisters in the band, and now their father, younger brother and older sister at High School have all joined making it a real family affair! With 19 members of the band, and so many new starters, it’s quite a challenge!
Burradon and Backworth have smaller numbers of new starters, but all showing a lot of promise.
We’re hoping that the returners will be able to help the new starters and gain confidence in themselves by doing so. The specially arranged music has easy parts for the new ones and more challenging parts for the returners as we try to keep everyone interested, learning and having fun.
The brass groups start back during the second week of term (Sept 12th, 13th and 14th) with new starters at each School joining our returning members in years 5 and 6.
We’re planning to quickly work up 2 performance pieces in which the new starters can play a simple part, while the continuing children tackle a more complicated part. We have a new piece called “Join the Band” and the successful arrangement of “Rock Around the Clock” that we played last term.
We are planning to take a joint band to North Tyneside’s Got Talent at the Whitley Bay Playhouse (NE26 1LK) on Tuesday Oct 10th 6:30-8:30pm, and to take the children to take part in the Brass in Concert workshops at the Sage Gateshead (NE8 2JR) on Saturday 18th Nov 9am-3pm including a performance on the Concourse, and to showcase a joint band at the “Best of Brass” Concert at St John’s Church, Killingworth (NE12 6BL) on Saturday Nov 25th 7-9:30pm
We can’t wait to get started!
We have reached the end of our first year – it’s been great fun! We’ve run 110 after-school sessions, performed in 10 School events, 2 out-of-school Christmas events and took 2 School bands to the Wansbeck Music Festival at the end of March.
It is a mark of our progress over the year, that all 3 school bands were able to put on good performances of our 2 summer pieces: Big Foot Stomp and Rock Around the Clock, playing in 2 parts with complex rhythms and using sharps and flats.
During the year we have worked on a number of pieces of music, most specially written or arranged for our starter brass groups. We’ve had opportunities to try out various brass instruments and percussion, and we’ve worked on development of general musical abilities and appreciation.
There has been a steady drop off in numbers over the year, having started with 52 children and 4 parents we ended with 22 children and 2 parents. We’re glad so many children had a go and we hope had some good experiences while they were in the brass groups.
We look forward to welcoming some new starters in September, when we will face the challenge of integrating them and finding ways to bring them on while keeping the more experienced children interested!
Finally we wish all the best to 4 of our children who are moving onto new schools: Lewis and Tom are going to George Stephenson High School, Joe and Shane are moving to new Primary schools. Previous leavers include Faye and Rose. We hope they all continue to enjoy music in some form at their new schools.
This half term we’re practicing 2 pieces for end of term performances at each of our 3 Schools: Big Foot Stomp and Rock Around the Clock (see the “Our Sheet Music” page via the Information page).
We are booked to play at the Balliol Primary’s Got Talent show on Tuesday 11th July at 1:30pm, Backworth Park Primary’s summer fair on Friday July 14th (time to be arranged) and Burradon Community Primary’s Got Talent show on Thursday 20th July at 1:15pm.
We will be hoping to sign up a few new children and parents for September when we open up the brass groups to children moving up from year 3 to year 4 and any children moving up to years 5 and 6 who missed out this year but would like to give it a go. Demos are arranged for Balliol 2pm Weds June 28th, Backworth 2:15pm Monday July 3rd and Burradon Friday 7th July at 1:15pm.
This term we are working on our “Nine Short Pieces” to introduce sharps and flats and extend the playing range upwards and downwards a bit.
The first piece “Big Foot Stomp” is already proving popular. We’ll let the children choose which of the pieces they like most and then extend them into performance pieces next half term.
Although they missed out on our trip to the Wansbeck Music Festival, the brass group at Burradon Community Primary School were not outdone in their end of term performances: one to parents and family members after the brass group on Tuesday; and a second at the School assembly on Thursday morning. It was the culmination of a term of hard work during which everyone has developed their playing ability a long way.
We played “Catch a Falling Star” and “United” featuring “The Blaydon Races”. Tom and Lucy blew the whistles during the “Clapping rhythm” part, while Brandon and Sophie hit the wood blocks during the “U-nit-ed da-da-da” part.
Headteacher Angela Hunter handed out certificates to all the children.
The photos show the children with teaching assistant Helen, who is learning alongside the children, and tutors Gavin and Nicola conducting and supporting the band.