Kettle Bridge Concertinas

 

Concentrating concertinists.

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Words by Sue W.     Photos by Sally G.

On Sunday, 8th May, most of our ever-growing membership gathered for a whole day of concertina band playing under the directorship of our guest, Jonathan Crowhurst. Jonathan is Musical Director of Maidstone Wind Symphony and a music teacher with an impressive CV! We were, therefore, confident that his qualities would include patience, as we were sure he would need a lot of it!

In fact Jonathan was very patient (and we were pretty well behaved most of the time) and he was able to bring together a group of players of very mixed abilities. Initially, Jonathan took us through one or two of our familiar pieces of music, dissecting and refining them to reach a level of playing many of us didn't think we could achieve.

After a shared lunch (when we were allowed to talk to each other!) we tackled a piece of music which most of us had to sight read - an arrangement by John Hammonds of Washington Post. Thanks to Jonathan's direction, this progressed from a cacophony of unrelated (and mostly wrong) notes to something that was pretty well joined up and worth listening to!

Many thanks go to Jonathan for a brilliant day of teaching - we hope that we can continue to put into practice all that he taught us about musicality, listening, using dynamics - and concentrating!