THE POPULAR Pershore Midsummer Brass festival celebration of brass band music will be broadcast online this weekend due to the current Coronavirus restrictions.
Tomorrow (Saturday) should have been the highlight of the year for brass band music locally with bands from across the Midlands and beyond descending on the town to make music in four venues across Pershore for 12 hours.
However, due to COVID-19 this year’s live event was cancelled at the height of the pandemic by devastated organisers who had been preparing for the 2020 event since last summer.
Despite the festival being axed, hard-working committee members refused to be beaten and put together a programme to be performed online.
Bands who had originally been looking forward to attending the festival have kindly provided virtual performances, some of which has been produced through remote lockdown recordings while other bands have supplied various recordings over the years.
As usual, the event will begin with a fanfare, this year provided by the Jaguar Land Rover band. The final piece will be a performance of a new piece by Lockdown Brass, a band with members from three local bands – Malvern Hills, Malvern Chase and Worcester Concert Brass – organised to support members at this difficult time.
Their most recent recording is a piece composed especially to honour the NHS during this difficult time. ‘Song for the Frontline’, is composed by Fodens Band’s principal trombone player and first performed virtually by Fodens Band.
John West, the chair of the Pershore Midsummer Brass committee, said: “We are, of course, disappointed not to be together enjoying wonderful music with good company, but be assured next year we will be striving to make good on what we have missed this year. We are, like everybody else, hoping that ‘normality’ will return soon.”
Visit www.facebook.com/PershoreAnnualMidsummerBrass for a full programme of performances which can be found at https://bit.ly/2YUeVAi until 10pm on Sunday (July 5).
Organisers are raising money to support Pershore Midsummer Brass to help run this year’s online extravaganza and the next one in 2021.
Visit www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/pmb?utm_id=1&utm_term=K4ae5Yq24 for more.
