Music for most, if not all, tastes!

‘Old ones, new ones, loved ones, neglected ones’, as the saying goes and more – from around the world and across the centuries! Always on the lookout for attractive additions to our extensive library, the band aims to explore a wide range of music which, hopefully, is as good to listen to as it is to play! We are neither a marching band nor a dance band but both elements feature regularly.

(While the Band is proud to lead the annual Remembrance Day Parade in Mold, we do prefer to sit down to perform whenever possible – and we certainly do not regard ourselves as a ‘Marching Band’!)

Below is a sample of our repertoire.

Marches being perhaps the staple diet of a band, have recently included, from the good old US of A, Bandology, Flying Tigers, St Louis Blues March and, from closer to home, Barnard Castle, Soldiers in the Park, Out of the Blue and Walkabout, plus the ever popular Spanish paso doble/march Amparito Roca by Jaime Texidor and the little known Karussellbrise, described as a polka/march – try marching, or even dancing, to that!

Dance inspired pieces have included arrangements of such familiar pieces as Brahms’ Hungarian Dance Number 5, Bizet’s Farandole, the ubiquitous Waltz No 2 by Shostakovich and 1950s number Blue Tango by Leroy Anderson. Original compositions include Mountain Country Dances and Ballad & Dance from the pen of Johnnie Vinson, and Hugh Stuart’s Three Ayres from Gloucester.

Originating in an age of antiquity, long before the concert wind band was conceived, is Respighi’s Airs of the Court – a reworking of melodies by all but forgotten renaissance composer Jean Philippe Besard.

Stage & Screen have been represented by selections from Fiddler on the Roof, highlights from Oliver, Irving Berlin’s From Rags to Ritz, Bright Lights on Broadway, All Shook Up and themes from The Great Race, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Strike Up the Band with the world of opera being represented by a suite from Carmen. Follow that with something more soothing? How about Moon River, A Whiter Shade of Pale, Yesterday, music from Lion King, the haunting saxophone solo in Bruce Fraser’s Dreamscape or an arrangement of the traditional melody, Londonderry Air?

For further folk-inspired music we’ve indulged in Philip Sparkes’ Three Klezmer Miniatures and the Americana medley, Southern Folk Rhapsody plus such perennial favourites as Teddy Bears Picnic, Caravan and Big Spender.

Over the years we’ve introduced some new numbers. To date, already sampled are Tribute to Rodgers & Hammerstein, General Wooster March, Come Fly with Me, Marching Song by Holst, and New York, New York. We’re also blowing the dust off Aces High, Liberty Bell, The Great Waldo Pepper March, A Little Tango Music, Concert Prelude and, topically, Singin’ in the Rain – let’s just hope that we’re not playing in it too often!

Alan Milnes

Director of Music