23rd May and finally Aberdeenshire Saxophone Orchestra got together to rehearse again. Of course it had to be outside and of course there was a biting wind. We didn’t care!
We did everything we could think of to make it Covid-safe. Apart from all the usual precautions, everyone took two lateral flow tests before attending and we even bought masks for the saxophones!
Mike, The Hardy Scot
Erik, The Not so Hardy Australian
We met in the car park of our lovely new rehearsal venue, The Hopeville Social Club in Inverurie who very kindly provided us with an urn of boiling water so that we could warm up with tea or coffee when we got too cold to play.
Bet the Neighbours Loved It!
Is Emma pink with the cold or the effort of blowing the Bass!
Among other things, we started rehearsing a brand new piece of music that is being composed especially for us by young composer Ben Lunn. The work is based on a book called Rhymes & Recollections of a Handloom Weaver’ which was written in 1847 by William Thom, ‘The Inverurie Poet’.
This is part of a project funded by the umbrella organisation for leisure music groups, Making Music.
The project teams Ben Lunn with Aberdeenshire Saxophone Orchestra and with Ugie Voices choir from Peterhead. The final work will include playing, singing and the Doric poetry and we are planning our grand première in March 2022.
Finally we got to hear what everything sounds like all together instead of bit by bit on zoom.
Wonderful!
William Thom and his Son
Just to round things off, we started work on a new piece that our MD Richard Ingham has composed for us in memory of one of our members, Mandy Smith from Portsoy.
A lovely tribute and another musical challenge.
What a brilliant day!
Ben Lunn is coming up in person for our next rehearsal at the end of June and our collaboration partners, ‘Ugie Voices’ choir are invited too. So we hope to be able to start putting parts of the work together then.
Richard Ingham keeping warm with extra energetic conducting