Christmas Season – December 2004
This year's Christmas season was as busy as ever for the band. The Christmas Concert was a very successful and fun evening, and proved to be a great send off for our retiring Musical Director Christine. Photos of the evening can be found here.
This year's carolling events at West Hove Sainsbury's and West Hove Golf Club season raised an impressive £400 for the band through kind public donations. We also held our annual carolling night at the Hangleton Manor Pub, with all proceeds as ever being donated to Leukaemia Research.
Our final Christmas event was taking part in the ‘Burning of the Clocks' parade in Brighton. This exciting event, in which paper lanterns of all shapes and sizes are paraded from the city centre down to the beach, is a high profile event in the area, and is held to celebrate the Winter Solstice.
Accompanied by a (very loud!) local percussion group ‘the Carnival Collective' the band performed a specially written piece of music to greet the procession at the beach. As the band and drummers played, the lanterns were placed onto bonfires in front of a huge effigy of ‘Old Father Time' to meet a fiery end. The evening culminated in a spectacular firework display, and proved a fitting finale to our Christmas season.
Photos of the Burning of the Clocks 2004
All change …! - November 2004
After 5 years Christine Nonoo has decided to step down as conductor of the Hangleton Band. Starting from January the band will be under the baton of John Williams, who will be joining us from Chichester Band. Christine will not be going far however! She has decided to join the rest of us on the other side of the baton as a cornet player. And a very welcome addition to the band she will make too.
The band would like to thank Chris for all her hard work and commitment during her time as conductor, and we look forward to John joining us in the New Year.
Folkestone Contest Result - October 2004
This year the band played ‘A Salford Sinfonietta' by Darol Barry in the Second Section of the Folkestone SCABA Contest. The band received some very positive comments from both the adjudicator and audience members, and we were placed fifth out of nine.
A clip of our performance
The adjudicator's remarks
A Night At the Movies - July 2004
This year's summer concert was 'A Night at the Movies', at the Windmill Theatre in Hove. The programme for the evening was made up entirely of film music from slushy romances, to Batman and James Bond. The venue was a change to our norm, with the specialist seating, and multi-media facilities, so to complete the cinematic theme, large film images were projected behind the band during pieces to fantastic effect!
Both Bands played to a packed, appreciative audience and the night was a big success. For the first time in a while, it was a concert organised and run by a large number of different Band members, so a real team-effort all round. The leaving collection for the concert was in aid of Clair O'Shea's Trek Kilimanjaro and raised £116 for Cancer Research UK, so thank you to all who made a donation.
Kilimanjaro Mountain Trek - June 2004
As some of you may know, Clair O'Shea is going to do a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro, (all 19800 foot of it!) next February for Cancer Research UK. The trek is a strenuous 7-day high altitude trek in a varied tropical climate to the highest peak in Africa on the border between Tanzania and Kenya.
As well as having to get extremely fit(!) Clair has the small task of raising £3500 to raise money for the charity. She is raising money in a variety of ways (including the Quiz night mentioned in the June newsletter and a collection at the summer concert on 10th July), and we will keep you updated of any fundraising events being organised. One small, but constant, way Clair is looking for support is to collect Smarties tubes filled with any spare 20 pence pieces.
If you would like to contact Clair or are interested in sponsoring her, click on the following link to visit her homepage, where you can also make secure on-line donations:
https://www.bmycharity.com/ClairKilimanjaro
Entertainments Contest Results - May 2004
The Band took part in the SCABA Entertainments Contest again this year. It was held at the Hawth in Crawley on Sunday 16th May. It was an interesting 25 minute performance and had a superb entrance to the stage (whistling the theme from the Great Escape), a soloist (a fantastic King Louis, AKA Andy Taylor), crystal clear announcing (thank you Geoff) and other assorted entertainment from monkeys to jungle animals with shakers and Dave Taylor marrying Jane Glineur mid-way through Breezin’ Down Broadway! We were pleased with our performance, and came third from nine Bands, winning a cup and cheque for the Band! We would like to thank Richard Slyman for helping out on 1st Baritone.
The adjudicator's remarks
Quartets Contest Results - February 2004
The Youth Band entered four ensembles into the SCABA Quartets Contest on 8th February at Ringmer Community College. Each group played extremely well (especially as it was soooo early on a Sunday morning!), and the results were as follows:
Junior Quartet A: (David Robson, Richard Taylor, Georgia Kensley, Allister Taylor, conductor Rachel Taylor) 1st place
Junior Quartet B: (Neil Thurston, Rikki van Berkel, James Taylor, Nathan Slydel, conductor Clair O’Shea) 6th place
Youth Quartet: Rebecca Nonoo, Chloe Jane Goacher, Saskia van Berkel, Jack Hooker, conductor Chris Nonoo) place
Youth Ensemble:(David Robson, Chloe Jane Goacher, Rebecca Nonoo, Richard Taylor, Gary Fido, Allister Taylor, Saskia van Berkel, Georgia Kensley, Jack Hooker, conductor Rachel Taylor) 3rd place
Excellent Christmas Season - January 2004
We have again had another successful Christmas Season. The carolling has again proved to be a big money-spinner for the Band, raising over £600 for our efforts. Also successful, was the Fundraising evening at the Hangleton Manor for Leukaemia Research. This evening was again well attended and has raised £235 in total.
Many thanks to all of you who gave up your weekend time and effort to either collect or play (or at least remain upright & avoid A&E for long enough to play, which is more than I managed!).