East Steel, Oulton Bands, Sparrows at Rothwell Festival

It's Friday evening, March 23rd, and we are on the road to Rothwell, to the Blackburn Hall to be precise. Wanda has organised for the steelband section to take its place for the first time ever at Rothwell Festival, and here we are in this lovely Victorian concert hall.



The Federation of Festivals doesn't allow photography at its festivals. This doesn't usually deter our parents but it does stop us getting some good action shots. We got special permission for this posed joint band picture at the end, and we invited this lovely adjudicator to join us.

At the end of the Friday school day it seemed a massive effort to get to Rothwell, but really it is only what the Oulton parents do every Tuesday to get their Sparrows to Sparrows, if you see what I mean.

In the event, the event was totally worth it. All the bands sounded great and Wanda's effort to arrange this totally paid off. Here are some pictures of the bands in rehearsal or gigging elsewhere.

Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows play Leeds ArtForms Town Hall Prom

It is one of our favourites: Leeds ArtForms Schools Prom at Leeds Town Hall. We played our Music For Youth Three [Some Enchanted Evening, California Girls, Living on a Prayer] plus Mozart's Symphony Number 40. 

The Orchestra was playing Stars Wars as the joint number. I thought Rocket Man or Starman might fit nicely. Bex located the sheet music, I wrote Rocket Man out, did a preliminary arrangement, gave it to Kips and Ed, and they did an arrangement for our agreed joint moments.



On the day, I pretended to myself that I was conducting the Leeds Youth Orchestra, although really David Greed was doing that. Actually I was flapping my arms a bit, while concentrating like mad on the score, and hoping somehow that the players, eyes down in their pans, knew where they were, because they sure weren't looking at me. I only wrote this tune out into a Foxwood Songsheet ten days previously and the band has only played it once through at a practice back at Shire Oak.







Players were Owen, Kirsten, Annie, Ella, Isha, Kurum , Esme, Millie, Alice, Claudia. Natalie drummed. Jermaine and Chris guested. I found that, at the public performance I played all the songs on different pans from the ones I had played at the rehearsal. Great. Not.



I'll spare you how long it took to collect pans from practice school, load into van, out of van, into Town Hall, along to stage, and back and back and Control Z, and back. [did I say I would spare you?].

Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows at Music 4 Youth Harrogate

February 24 2018. The Sparrows are back at St Aidan's, Harrogate for yet another National Festival For Youth Regional Event.

pans in waiting

Our songs this year are 50s, 60s, 80s, Some Enchanted Evening, California Girls and Living on a Prayer. We had planned also to include Tragedy but our playing of it was just that: a tragedy!

It took us a lifetime to arrange Living on a Prayer. I asked Pippa to do the initial groundwork, then she and I ran it through on the Manchester Carnival Saturday night inbetween. This required a coupla cans. After that the Sparrows and I rearranged and rearranged till we were happy with the structure, the intros, the intros, a unison section. There was nothing we didn't mess about with. 

As ever the evening before I took the pans across, unloaded them and left them ready for an easy set up the next day. The upside of having no storage space at present for the six basses is that we don't have to take them to gigs , and this in turn means I can use my own little Transit van for the whole band.

Players were Alice on cello pans, Annie on bass and single second, Claudia on double tenors, Ella on single guitar, Isha on oversize single second,  Kurum on double guitars, Kirsten on soprano and bass, Owen on soprano and bass, Natalie guesting on kit.

Sparrows at Royds Christmas Concert 2017

It didn't snow but it is dark and rainy. But into Royds School, which was very easy to find, it is warm and welcoming. Chris is already here and Emma is making teas and we can load straight from playground to hall.

Players are Owen, Kirsten [who both go to Royds], Karam, Isha, Ella, Esme [with Wanda helping her again], with guest drummer, Chris.

Emma from Royds joined us for a few carols at the beginning, then some awesome singing by other Royds students, then Sparrows played Symphony 40 and Wings of a Dove [Prince Buster of course].

pans set up waiting for players

Traditionally Royds has invited some older people from a local care home to sing carols, so just before the concert started we learnt Charlotte [Emery]'s version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. This has several bars with four chords in! And the Little Beauts managed it. Now that was a very public challenge I was proud of.

Back outside it was cold, dark and rainy, but we were done with gigs for 2017, and we did it in style!

Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows at Temple Newsam

By Sunday the temperature had been plummeting to the point of widespread snow being forecast. And I was not recovered from standing on Brudenell Road in the cold and dark for two hours.




Plus I hadn't been able to do a reccy for this gig [parking- loading that kind of a thing], and we had originally agreed to do one set outside!

So on Sunday [December 10] I went over early to Temple Newsam; the staff carpark gate was being opened. Finding the organisers was easy; they were amenable to anything I suggested; we could do both sets inside; there was a green room in this fabulous old building with tea bags and urn; I could bring the van right to the door.

In Temple Newsam heaven.

The players were Kirsten, Annie, Owen, Karam, Isha, Ella, Esme, Alice and myself. We were joined in the second half by Wanda and Vicky. The two latter were being generally helpful in the first, Wanda was supporting our newest Sparrow; Vicky generally putting things in alphabetical order.

Apparently it [the room] had been rammed in the morning. Thankfully it wasn't in the afternoon and there was just enough room for the band, the parents, the organisers and a few strays overstaying the morningfest.





It had been a long and stressful weekend: three gigs, three separate bands, plus the YAMSEN: SpeciallyMusic Town Hall concert on Wednesday, and then another one at Royds coming on Tuesday that makes five gigs in seven days - just thinking about it makes me feel faint!]; massive snow warnings. 


But it was great! The Sparrows sight-read their way through one seasonal song after another. How Kirsten and Owen got their way through the first line of Magic Moments I'll never know, but they did! Woohoo!

[Now who are these characters let loose with my camera!]

Foxwood and Sparrows at Unity Day July 2017

I watched my local pub go up in flames 22 years ago. I thought the clouds in the sky were in the wrong order - white on top of brown, and brown on top of grey. Weird.

view from top bedroom window 1995

What with the melting firebombed cars and the melting tarmac on Hyde Park Road and Moorland Road, and the surreal clashes between police with batons and shields and some rioters, Unity Day was born.








And now I have played steelpans for Unity every year but two ever since. First time, of all things, the Unity Committee asked for the steelband based at the College of Music, the one, in fact that I played in. [Failing to find the actual day, have used the band at another gig around that time, for now].

Panic at gig mid nineties

When I found out that Unity Day was on my doorstep [and I mean literally, as I live alongside Woodhouse Moor], I said to Amit, Chris, Simon and the crew - Did you not know I had my own steelband, and they said no but we do now. Which is how I came to do all the others.

Foxwood Steel was reborn out of the devastating closure of Foxwood School. This closure tore apart  its community of children from Seacroft and Gipton apart. We specialist teachers were thrown to the winds. I was sure that at least the steelband would survive, and twenty one years after Foxwood School [pointlessly and briefly, renamed East Leeds High School] it still does. 

NEXT! Pictures!

This year Sparrows joined up with Foxwood again. We agreed to open up on main stage at 12 [to the sound crew and a few stewards], and then played on the Stone Circle at 3 [this site suggested by Kevin of Mothers fame]. Thanks Julia for doing what they could with pics of a bare stage in a white tent in an empty park! Lol.



We were me, Vicky, Wanda, Gary, Georgia, Bart, Charlotte, MillieC, Katie, Maya, Lola, Owen, Ella, Annie. Ellie and Annie took off up the park with two but kept getting lost. Hilare! Patrick was there too, disguised in a Foxcub top, so you couldn't tell someone was holding him and playing one-handed.


Most bizarre moment was shortly after we had finished dragging the instruments up from the backstage holding area. The wondering samba band wondered up to us in the Stone Circle as we started our first song. We stopped playing and waited for them to pass.

They stopped wandering [but went on playing, static loudly, right next to us.]; we waited a bit longer, contemplated how we could fit a tune in with them, then Wanda said, Dead or Alive would see them off! And she was right.











After the stone circle, what a lovely arena [and thanks to Tom for nice pics] we carried our pans back to the van by the stage, watched Bart overload himself, as usual, and watched as strangers tried to "help" him. Lol.

Bart did wheelies in his wheelchair and Katie tried to as well - with less success, but made us laugh!

Loaded van took it then a few of us hung round, eating samosas and, in my case, bumping into ex-students.

community choir

Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows and a workshop at Bramham Park Scouts Big Event

It was meant to be Huddersfield Carnival but that didn't happen, so Plan B just blossomed into action and here we are, thanks to Jon's persistance, at Bramham Park, and it is just the most welcoming, professional wonderful event ever.

We were leaders: me and Bex, plus Ella, Karam, Alice, Owen, Claudia, Kirsten, Isha, with guest drummer, Bart.

To say this was a big event would be an understatement. This park is big. I called the day before and dropped off most of the pans, and then on a warm summer evening parents, Amanda, Julia, Owen's dad, and Mick brought their pan-playing offspring to the park, and settled on the grassy bank.

Meanwhile [unknown to me at least] Andy and the crew from this magnificent stage were setting up a huge screen  to one side of us. And in the audience, as it turned were lots of my school-pupils plus Ben, and Ella's brother.

Finishing at 8 ish we left the pans stacked in the adjoining marquee, and the following morning I returned on my own to do a morning of drop-in workshops [I should have brought a tent!]. Here I re-met Natalie's ex-student from Abbey Grange.

Tyler was a tower of strength and stayed with me all morning as the groups rolled in and rolled out. And the stewards could not have been more helpful helping me move, set up and load the van