Black Dyke Festival to be screened live on BB Website

The inaugural lecture recital will be screened live on the BB website on Friday 29 May.

The 2009 Black Dyke Brass Festival, to be held at Leeds Metropolitan University and Leeds Town Hall from 29 to 31 May, is to introduce a lecture-recital, presented by the band’s conductor, Nicholas Childs, which will be broadcast around the world via the Internet.

Professor Childs will give an illustrated overview of the band’s 155-year history, beginning with rare music taken from John Foster’s 1855 octet books, and also featuring music from the ‘golden age’ of brass bands by Elgar, Holst and Ireland. The lecture will be available as a worldwide educational resource on the Black Dyke and British Bandsman websites during and after the weekend.

Speaking to BB, Nicholas Childs commented: “One of the over-riding ambitions at Black Dyke is to involve and inspire young performers to aim at the highest level. Accordingly, there will also be a young composer’s workshop led by Paul Hamlyn Award winner, Emily Howard, and a combined performance featuring Black Dyke in concert with the 60 young musicians of the Yorkshire Youth Brass Band. The British Trombone Society has also accepted an invitation to participate in the Lower Brass Focus, when it is anticipated that 120 local players will join a sequence of daytime workshops, and we are pleased that new music, including scores by Professor Peter Graham and Philip Harper will feature prominently.”

Professor Childs added: “2009 will be a special year in the band’s long and distinguished history, and the Festival and Heritage Symposium aims to pass on some of Black Dyke’s hard-won core values to future generations, to place new music alongside established repertoire and to counterpoint some stars of the future with legends of the past and present. The Festival also marks the start of the band’s five-year commissioning policy, which will culminate in 2014 with the première of a substantial new score by the leading international composer, James McMillan. We would like to acknowledge our wonderful partnership with Leeds Metropolitan University, where our accent is firmly on ‘Partnering the Past and Fostering the Future’.” The Saturday Gala Concert will feature Paul Lovatt-Cooper’s Immortal, which tells the story of the band through music and cinematic film on the large screen, while highlights of the following afternoon’s concert in Leeds Town Hall, which also features the Yorkshire Youth Band, will be the Finale from Saint Saëns’ Organ Symphony and a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.