150th Celebration events starts with a great success

Saturday 15th was a busy day for the Lochgelly Band, but a very enjoyable one. The band’s long day started at around midday setting up the Lochgelly Centre for a concert in the evening, and when this was complete the first part of the band’s 150th anniversary celebrations kicked off with a reunion of former band members. Around seventy members past and present met in the main gallery of the Lochgelly Centre to talk about old times and recount stories of their time as a Lochgelly player as well as enjoy the exhibition of memorabilia covering the band’s history. There was a huge range of ages and experience on show from the youngest current player, 12-year-old Michael Abbot who was preparing to play his first full concert with the band through to 92-year-old James Sinclair who played with the band in the 50’s. James was part of the band who won successive Scottish Championships in 1955 when the band won the fourth section and then in 1956, when the third section title came to Lochgelly. The oldest current member of the band is 69-year-old Davie Bennison. Davie joined Lochgelly Band at the age of 13 and can actually be seen in some of the pictures in the band hall as a fresh-faced youngster with James Sinclair. Davie has been very committed to the Lochgelly band and has played a wide range of instruments as well as spending a period of time on the band’s committee, and a number of years as band chairman. In this current era of banding there is a great deal of movement of players between bands, Davie however has spent his 56 years of banding solely with Lochgelly Band. Davie’s commitment to the brass banding world was recognised 6 years ago when he was awarded the SABBA 50 year medal and more recently by the band itself when they bestowed life membership of the band to Davie. Michael Abbott has been receiving tuition from the band’s resident teaching staff for some two years and has played in a few concerts previously, but only for a few pieces, Saturday evening was the first concert in which Michael performed through the whole concert.

One of the most successful periods of the band’s history was the late 60’s early 70’s. The pinnacle of this period was in 1973 when the band won the title of Scottish Champions in the Championship section. This meant a trip to London to represent Scotland in the National Championships at which the band was placed a very creditable 8th. Thirteen members of this band were present on Saturday and we can only hope that it is not too long before Lochgelly can reach these heights again.

For the last 150 years the Lochgelly Band have enjoyed performing for the people of Lochgelly and a gala concert was felt to be a very fitting way to continue the celebrations. The band under the baton of resident bandmaster, Brian Paterson, performed a concert of music ranging from the 16th Century right through to today. After a rousing start to the concert with Eric Ball’s march ‘Star Lake’, band chairman Iain McAlpine welcomed the audience to what was such a momentous occasion for the Lochgelly Band. Iain went on to thank Verdi Barr and all the members of the Lochgelly Centre for the help in staging the exhibition, reunion and concert. A vote of thanks also went to the band’s committee who had worked very hard in trying to contact as many former members as possible whilst also preparing the exhibition. Finally Iain thanked everyone in the audience for supporting the band and hoped everyone enjoyed the evening entertainment to come.

As well as conducting the band and gaining some laughs, and a few groans from the audience, with his irreverent stories Brian passed the conductor’s baton on to Raymond Tennant, one of Scotland’s top brass band conductors. Raymond has recently become involved with the band taking them to the Scottish Championship contest earlier this year where he achieved 6th place in the second section. As Raymond was conducting the band, this allowed Brian Paterson to demonstrate his other talent, namely as a superb Euphonium soloist. Brian thrilled the audience with James Curnow’s ‘Rhapsody for Euphonium’.

Two members of the band also gave the audience great pleasure by performing solo items, they were Bass Trombone player Bryan Johnston who took the audience into the jungle with his rendition of ‘I wanna be like you’ from Disney’s ‘Jungle Book’ composed RM &RB Sherman arranged by Alan Fernie. Keeping the animal theme John Martin, principal Eb Bass, took everyone back to their childhoods with a superb performance of Peter Harts ‘Nellie the Elephant’ arranged by Mark Owen.

There was one other very special guest soloist who performed on the evening and that was Melvyn Bathgate. Melvyn, who currently plays with the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass band, played with Lochgelly during the late 60’s and early 70’s and was a member of the 1973 Scottish Championship winning band. Melvyn thrilled the audience with a virtuoso display of ‘The Carnival of Venice’ by Herbert Clarke, this particular arrangement was by George Thompson who was also connected to Lochgelly Band and conducted them through the 70’s. Melvyn then slowed the tempo down and played two beautiful traditional Scottish songs, both of which had been specially arranged for him. The first, ‘Afton Water’ which was arranged by Lee Baker for Melvyn whilst he played with the British Nuclear Fuels Band, fully showed the lyrical quality of Melvyn’s tone. The final piece featuring Melvyn was Alan Fernie’s arrangement of ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, Melvyn dedicated this to his brother and former band member, Jim Bathgate who was in the audience on Saturday evening and also to the memory of ‘Mr Lochgelly Band’, Bill Shaw who is sadly no longer with us.

After the concert chairman Iain McAlpine said he ‘Was delighted that so many former players and members of the public had turned up to share this special time with the current members of the Lochgelly Band and hoped they would continue to support the band at the other events planned for throughout the year’.