Author: Chris Alexander

Concluding a summer of marches and music

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It’s been another wonderful summer for Camberley and District Silver Band, performing across a number of bandstands and other engagements, in mostly good weather!

Aldershot and Guildford Castle provided excellent weather for enjoyable afternoons out with the crowds. Guildford was especially successful as we entertained (and only occasionally put off) the bowls players just behind the bandstand. We also returned to Church Crookham for their annual village fete and were baked in the glorious sunshine, to the point where the Official Band Mascot, Eddie the Greyhound, was forced to retire to the shade behind the book stall.

The band overcame tricky prevailing conditions (an afternoon-long torrential downpour), with the assistance of a couple of borrowed gazebos, to just about survive the Cedar Lodge Nursing Home summer fete. Despite the deluge the performance was enjoyed by all residents, who spontaneously burst into accompaniment clapping during our newly-acquired (and excellent) arrangement of Shine Jesus Shine by Paul Benyon of Martlesham Brass.

For this summer’s programme I dug into the band’s extensive music archives to pull out some new work; Shine Jesus Shine was an excellent hit, but I think Sussex By The Sea won’t survive much longer in the folders. When I was searching for some different marches to sprinkle through our programmes I discovered we have quite the Kenneth J. Alford collection (some say he is the Sousa of England) and so some of those have had an airing and more to come.

The band concludes its summer programme with a late bandstand, at Victoria Park in Newbury, on 3rd September. Find out more about that here and don’t forget to sign up

to our newsletter if you want a reminder.

Before we move on to our traditional winter programme of Remembrance Sunday and Christmas carols, there are two dates for your diaries that you really do want to keep free!

First of all, the band returns to High Cross Church in Camberley for our hugely popular annual concert. Tickets aren’t available just at the moment but be sure to keep 14th October 2017 free! Find out more and subscribe for updates here.

After a very popular first year, Big and Brassy, the joint concert among local non-contesting brass bands, returns to Princes Hall Aldershot on 15th April 2018. Again tickets aren’t yet available but full details will be coming soon.

Finally, if you’re already signed up to our newsletter, you can also keep up with the band by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook.

The band’s new look

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Following some great hard work by the committee, I am pleased to be able to show you the new logo for Camberley and District Silver Band!

The logo was brought to life by Tim McNicol, a graphic designer for Embrya Studio, who came up with this fantastic concept:

The idea behind the design was to create a fun, almost light hearted look to the design, without it feeling childish or cartoony. We avoided the more traditional or script fonts and opted for a bolder typeface which is simple and easy to read without being too corporate and cold. Utilising the band colours of gold, teal and black, the end result is a well balanced and compact logo which will work well for a wide range of purposes.

And we love it! Look out for the logo making an appearance around Surrey, Berkshire and Hampshire over the summer. And if you want your own logo, go check out Embrya studio’s site.

Thank you for a successful Supper Concert

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Last night the band hosted our Supper Concert at Crowthorne Methodist Church, and I am pleased to report that thanks to the hard work of the band members and our willing assistants, it was a big success!

Visitors from far and wide came to hear a hugely varied performance of “light entertainment” music, ranging from modern pieces and arrangements through to older and well-loved music.

I am building a bit of a reputation for digging out interesting stories about the pieces of music we are playing (even if the links from one to the other are a bit tenuous at times) – as well as going on a bit in between pieces! But there is one story I didn’t get to share last night which I would like to share now is about our opening piece of the evening, Alford’s Colonel Bogey march.

Here’s the “conductor’s score” for the march – if you look carefully it is old enough to have been stamped with the band’s original name, before we changed it back!

On the night I told the story about how the piece was made famous by the movie Bridge over the River Kwai, and you can see the scene from the movie here:

But there is another story, which is of how the piece got its title – and it’s all to do with golf!

When golf was just starting out as a sport, it is said that one player would whistle in two pitches rather than shouting “fore” – going down a minor third. This is the first two notes of each phrase of the Colonel Bogey march.

But what about the dear Colonel himself? According to golf lore, he never actually existed as a real person! In Coventry in the early stages of the game’s popularity, instead of scoring against the people in their own group, golfers came up with the idea of scoring against a mysteriously consistent and average player. The concept of “par” had just been invented, and so this imaginary player was said to score a “bogey”, or one over par, on each hole of the course – hence their consistently average performance. But the Coventry players, who were all men in the military, insisted that the imaginary player have a military rank just as all of the other members of the club did. And for someone who played so much golf, they must be very important – hence the assigned rank of Colonel, and the birth of Colonel Bogey!

BBC Radio Berkshire

Wenni and I were also on (very briefly!) the Peachy Quest programme of BBC Radio Berkshire just before 11am on the concert day. Sadly they didn’t complete their quest and make it to the venue in time, but they did come and say hello and put a video and photo up online.

Listen to the show on the Radio iPlayer or you can listen to the excerpt below: