STALHAM Brass Band, East Anglia’s longest-established brass band and winners of the coveted Queen’s Golden Jubilee Award for Voluntary Service, are promoting their musical heritage.
This week all over the country special events are celebrating the British brass band.
Apart from providing additional publicity in local schools and libraries, playing during the annual street fair, and holding open rehearsals, the Stalham Brass Band decided to concentrate its efforts this week on looking twenty years ahead to the players of the future.
The band has always been at the forefront of music training for young people since the 1970’s.
In 2002, the Queen’s Jubilee Year, a new band was established by Stalham’s director of music Tim Thirst, to concentrate on their training young players - the Stalham Jubilee Brass Band.
Since that time more than a hundred youngsters have been given taster sessions with brass instruments and training.
Nine of those have now graduated into the main Stalham Brass Band, with a further six coming up in a few months.
With this in mind, Stalham Band’s events have been aimed at young people.
On Friday, the first day of National Brass Band Week, members of the band took time off work to give a special afternoon presentation to young people aged 6 to 16 as well as parents and the public.
A special audio/visual presentation took them on a journey through the life of Stalham Brass Band from the 1800’s to the present and included a "fashion show" of old uniforms from the museum as well as unique instruments.
Everyone had a chance to inspect the MBE. awarded to the late Gerald Thirst, as well as the Jubilee Award itself.
The highlight for all the youngsters, though, was the hands-on time with the instruments.