Sparrows play Music For Youth Harrogate

rehearsal bun break at City of Leeds School

You know Debs, what makes a thing work isn't only what happens on the day. It's what leads up to it. As well. So when the Sparrows played so beautifully today at St Aidan's it was because everything that had happened before came together.

rehearsal February

rehearsal January

First we chose an eclectic mix of tunes from different eras, then I sat at my desk, half an ear on the Lewis repeat of a repeat, mechanically copying out conventional music bars into Foxwood Songsheets.  Then we tried them out on the class. They sounded terrible. We persevered. By Week 4 they still sounded terrible and we hadn't even finished I Dreamed a Dream. By autumn half term I heard that they were making Les Miz into a film. Just what I needed. My idea of an unusual choice was being whistled down streets the length and breadth of mainland Music For Youth Britain.

Then it was the eighth or ninth week of learning our quartet of tunes when Sarah [I think it was Sarah] said: do we have to do these again? Well, yes, we did, over and over again. One by one, each of these new tunes had a breakthrough; then the Town Hall concert, then Pat and Lynn came to the last rehearsal for a bit of constructive criticism.




Then we had to carry the pans down the school corridors, and back into the van; on Friday Tim and took the instruments to Harrogate, and set the stands up in St Aidan's Hall; Saturday it's the train: getting on at Leeds, Burley Park, Horsforth, get off Hornbeam Park.

performing at St Aidan's

Walk a lot, buy tea and buns, play our tunes, listen to the other bands. Loved the Flutes; loved Tewitt, loved Mark Pallant's last orchestra, well loved all the ones we saw.

leading off

Long but nice adjudications. Suddenly it's 5.20 and we have to run for the train. Just made for the 5.40pm. Natalie and Vicky packed with remaining car-driven Sparrows. Rick drives to Leeds Civic Hall ready for the Lord Mayor's Banquet.