Huntingdonshire Music School Association - Brass

From Tubanews:

Tuba Carols 2009 is on Sunday 13th December at 12.45 until 14.30 in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Please tell all your Tuba / euphonium / baritone/ sousaphone / helicon / ophecleide / serpent / cimbasso playing friends, and of course, put the date in your own diary.

Music (4 parts, with descants, all clefs) will be provided, also chairs, you will need to bring a music stand.
Last year we managed a fantastic 54 players and collected £780 for charity. (Watch last year’s on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J879e_ntkn0 )

This year it would be great if we could manage 75 + players! We’ll be collecting for The Prostate Cancer Research Foundation (www.thepcrf.org), who’s fundraising campaign using the memory of Bob Monkhouse is, I’m sure, already familiar to many of you.

I look forward to hearing all of you on Sunday 13th December!

Best regards, Chris Ludwig, Tuba Carols.

tubacarols@ntlworld.com

Spotted in The Metro (free paper) on the commute this morning:

Germans Wee in Brass Instruments

Thursday, May 7, 2009

A drinker is bold as brass as he spends a penny - into a tenor horn.
The unusual urinals at a pub in Freiburg, south Germany, were put in by landlord Martin Hartmann.

‘Most people see the funny side but we’ve had a few complaints from musicians,’ he said

Some of us are old enough to remember some of the fine polished brass in management urinals but they were never like this! You have to feel sorry for the instruments. Not that they aren’t being put to use but it does seem a shame to spend the end of your days being the butt of this sort of treatment. I suppose it’s lucky there weren’t any spare tubas lying around.

Probably time to start thinking of some appropriate musical terms or expressions or indeed time signatures ... ‘P-major’ springs to mind and ‘pp’ has a whole new meaning!

Strange times. The Internet is a useful tool and it provides so many good things. There are those, however, who exploit the work of others.

I was browsing randomly and found that our very own Robin Norman - Director of the Senior Concert Band and brass tutor is now available as a ring tone for a phone. It’s Robin playing Czardas - something I believe he used to play as a party piece whilst performing with the GUS Band.

It’s not hard to guess where this was obtained from - someone or something has trawled our very own HUMS Aloud podcast site where, episode 3 features Robin playing Czardas recorded at the 40th birthday celebrations for the music school as part of the ‘Leader’s Excuse-Me’ concert where the teachers took to the stage instead of the students.

Not sure what to think to this. It would be nice if the performer got some acknowledgement.