Doncaster Council

75th Anniversary Concerts

...marking the 75th anniversary of the formation of the Music Service.

Comments by Philip Scowcroft
(full reviews are available at Doncaster Music Service - Festival 75)

The Music Service enjoyed some splendid concerts during its Festival year, 2007, to mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of the service - the oldest of its type in the country.

The first of the three 75th Anniversary concerts took place at Priory Methodist Church on 13 March. This was a cunning mixture of some of the Centre’s least experienced ensembles and some of the more experienced smaller ensembles.
 
 
The second event of the Festival 75 took place at the Dome on 17 March, an event awesome in its scale with two junior orchestras, two concert bands, the steel pans, two guitar groups, all recorder groups, the electric guitars (good planning to have the gentle sound of the recorders succeeded immediately by the harsher sound of the “electrics”), the Doncaster Schools Senior Orchestra and the Symphonic Band, whose rousing rendition of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes march with Emma Stockdale’s breathtaking piccolo playing dominant, was one of the outstanding memories (of many good ones). Again it was good to see so many of the teachers composing or arranging music especially for their ensembles.

The evening was enhanced by the presence of the author and raconteur Gervase Phinn, a great admirer of the Music Service, who gave a “history lesson” on its 75 years with musical illustrations from most of the ensembles on view.
 
The third Festival concert (18 March), also at the Dome, was a similar structure to the previous evening but with mainly different ensembles. Again it was a wonderful occasion, a worthy celebration of something worth marking and holding on to for the future. There was another welcome opportunity to hear James Belbin-Wood’s Celebration, this time with its first section in the custody of Beechfield Youth Orchestra.

Does the fact that the Dome was filled to the rafters both nights running indicate the force of schools’ music within the town? Astonishingly, three festivals, all with a substantial musical input (the others were HotHouse and the Don Valley Competitive Festival) all took place simultaneously in the Doncaster Metropolitan Borough area. The Music Service’s Festival 75 was probably the biggest audience puller of the three; perhaps in view of school music’s popularity since the days of William Appleby and even before, we should not be too surprised at that.

Singing Together

The two songs written for the Festival - "The Song Makers" by Douglas Coombes and "Singing Together" by Kevin Edwards -  featured in a  Radio Sheffield re-creation of the "Singing Together" radio broadcasts which William Appleby hosted for many years. This took place on 25 June 2007 (a Monday at 11.00am, the day and time that the original SINGING TOGETHER programmes were broadcast).

All Doncaster's primary schools were sent copies of the songs to teach to their pupils in Key Stage 2 with help from our staff where required. Around 5000 children in Doncaster schools took a little time out of their day to remember the way the nation's children were encouraged to learn to appreciate the joy of singing.

A recording of the songs, their words, and details of how to obtain the sheet music for them is available by going to Doncaster Music Service - Singing Together.

Staff Performance Concert

2007 was a great year for the Music Service and not the least fascinating event of it took place on 14 June at Priory Methodist Church in the shape of a Doncaster Music Service Staff Concert. No fewer than forty took part in this - administrative as well as teaching staff - and they produced a wealth of varied music finely performed and, (this is perhaps the crucial point), with an obvious sense of enjoyment.

As with all the Anniversary concerts, there was a full house to enjoy it all. The quality of the performances was a striking demonstration of how much the town's music has long owed - and still does - to the Music Service. I hope this concert will not be a one-off, although one appreciates that were it to be annual it might well be too much for such a busy staff. You can see a nine minute clip of the staff concert on the main Doncaster Music Service website