The opening concerts of The British Bandsman Concert Series: Reading were a huge success and have really given the concert series the best possible start with The Cory Band taking the 2pm and 7pm slots on Saturday 3rd February.
The concert series is spread across 12 months, it started on 3rd February 2024 with Cory Band and ends on 1st February 2025 with Aldbourne Band (2pm) and Brighouse and Rastrick (7pm) with all the concerts taking place in the Concert Hall at Reading Town Hall.
The first of the Cory concerts was advertised as a more family friendly programme with ‘Disney Spectacular’ (Goff Richards), ‘My Favourite Things’ (Alan Fernie), ‘Banana Island’ (Etienne Crausaz) and Midway (arr. Harper) just some of the pieces in the first half and then a second half that included the Concert Set ‘King Kong’. With tickets being made available to local music schools and school children from the area for just £5 each a good number of the audience were youngsters who really enjoyed the offering from The Cory Band. Concert organiser Rob Tompkins said ‘It was important to give youngsters an opportunity to hear Cory Band and we all know that Philip Harper is great at making concerts fun for the younger generation, this worked perfectly and over 50 of the tickets sold for the 2pm concert were sold at the discounted £5 which proves that by making the concert accessible and affordable you can encourage a younger audience to listen to a brass band.’
At the conclusion of the 2pm concert there was a short demo of Denis Wick mouthpieces and mutes from Tom Hutchinson, this was an added ‘extra’ to send the audience home feeling they have been well entertained and got good value for money which is essential for a successful concert series.
At 7pm the concert goer was entertained with a different first half to the concert that included ‘Sicilian Vespers’ (arr. Howard Lorriman), ‘Autumn Leaves’ which has been arranged as an Eb Bass Solo and played by the super talented Tommy Tynan, ‘Aria’ (John Golland) and then the piece that I know many were looking forward to ‘The Year of the Dragon’ (Philip Sparke), what an end to first half and with the King Kong Concert Set to come in the 2nd half.
After the interval the concert started with a new piece from Christopher Bond ‘Soaring the Heights’ which was written to celebrate The Cory Bands 140th Anniversary in 2024. The King Kong Concert Set followed and was enjoyed by a near capacity audience. There were a few surprises left with a raffle prize to be drawn, the one and only prize was to conduct The Cory Band, ‘it’s not difficult’ says Philip Harper, ‘it’s 2 in a bar at about 180 bpm’ with the winning ticket belonging to one of the wonderful staff at the Concert Venue the opportunity was taken by well known local conductor Neil Brownless and the piece of course was the William Tell Overture and fair play to Neil he did a fantastic job of conducting the band and the audience were amazed by both the band and Neil for the amazing skill on show to play this piece at such pace. The final piece on the programme was ‘I Want to Break Free’ (arr. Harper) and the shouts of encore that followed was enough to bring Philip Harper back on stage for a final piece of the concert and of the day, the audience all stood as one at the end and gave Cory a well-deserved standing ovation before heading off home having had a fantastic evening.
Rob Tompkins said ‘there are many things you can take away from organising a concert like this, the pride that the event has been enjoyed by so many, knowing that there were some in the audience who have never heard a brass band play before and now they are signing up for information on the rest of the concert series. The younger audience at 2pm was a real highlight, along with over hearing so many noting that there are still another 10 concerts across 5 dates and all at Reading Town Hall, ‘this is amazing’ one person said to their friend ‘so many bands and all on our doorstep’, ‘I will make sure I sign up for information on the others’ said one of the concert goers to his partner, ‘definitely, I want to come back, what a great concert’ came the reply.
There is a huge amount of work that goes into organising a concert series like this, a huge thank you to all the staff at Reading Town Hall, to the wonderful Cory Band for such an entertaining programme for two very different audiences and thank you to everyone who came, there is a famous phrase in one of my favourite films ‘If you build it they will come’, well I built it and they certainly came, a fantastic day and one that will certainly live long in the memory.’
