Over the years, the fertile brass band grounds of the Cheshire plain, fed by its various M6 motorway links, have produced many outstanding players that have gone on to wear the famous red jacket of Foden’s Band. 

And with the development of an innovative youth development programme since 2012, those arterial connections from various community youth organisations (as far afield as Lancashire, the Midlands and North Wales) now lead back to a vibrantly beating heart in Sandbach - one that with innovative connections to organisations such as Cheshire East Music Hub, the RNCM, Besson and Love Music Trust is enabling Foden’s to inspire a new generation of performers. 

Benefit

How many will eventually play for the band in years to come we will have to wait and see, but for the time being the once a month rehearsals under the direction of Mark Bousie and Michael Fowles can only benefit both them and their parent bands. 

Playing interesting, challenging music also helps - so full marks for a programme that saw them open with Lucy Pankhurst’s chilling ‘3minuteWARNING’ - a reminder of those 1970s self-preservation public information films and the famous Raymond Brigg’s ‘When the Wind Blows’ book.  It was played with heart-pounding urgency.

Stylish delicacy

Dean Goffin’s ’Light of the World’ was a tasteful ‘banding basics’ contrast, before we got to hear a trio of fantastic little vignettes from the pen of Joseph Horovitz. His ‘Music Hall Suite’ was performed with stylish delicacy and nuance as well as excellent solo contributions from all round the stands. 

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A complete change of direction though came in Simon Dobson’s throbbing ‘Firefly’; all grungy pump and grind (although curiously in a very straight forward beat pattern). It may be a musical language as foreign to the over-50s as emoji ideograms, but to teenagers it flows with wonderful freedom and natural understanding. It was ....great.

A cracking concert was rounded off with ‘A Cambrian Suite’ - all hwyl and lyrical passion as the young players showed that from the impending apocalypse to a possible celebration of a Welsh Six Nations success they had everything under impressive control. 

Iwan Fox