Brassbanned interviews Mark Ford, conductor of Kew Band Melbourne.
Mark discusses preparations for Nationals 2012, upcoming events and an exciting collaboration with the University of Melbourne.
See more at www.brassbanned.com
Transcript
Auto-generated from the live stream, expect the occasional robot mishearing.
[Music] uh good evening brass fan viewers thanks for watching once again tonight we’ve got the conductor of Cuban Melbourne Mark Ford with us Mark how you going oh very good thanks Tim good to see you yeah good to be here Mark Nationals just around the corner about six weeks away how’s it going you’re sort of happy with progress so far um yeah very happy actually um we’ve had a very good start to the year we gave the band a really nice long uh break over
Christmas so we’ve had December and January off so we started back in in start of February and you know we’ve had a really good uh lead up up until now we’ve got a weekend in Bendigo coming up and so that’ll be great we’re running our pieces there and um yeah and we’ve had 100 sort of attendance at rehearsal which is is always a you know can’t be a problem but uh
Matthew now Matthew van Emrick now has been president for a couple of months and he’s whipped the band into shape um so we’ve had some great attendance so yeah the spirit’s really high excellent and for anyone watching who’s not playing in an a grade Brass Band what’s what sort of rehearsals do you guys do how busy is it in pre-nationals for you um yeah it’s pretty intense um we’ve got uh you know we’ve some players in the band uh they’re playing in the band for the first time and that’s that’s one of the things that they’ve mentioned that uh that the big difference between
I guess where they’ve come from and and their experience at the moment is the intensity and the rehearsals and that everyone gets down doing the business in rehearsal and and gets on doing the job that they need to do to to make it grow and get better excellent and Mark you’ve got a couple of gigs coming up you mentioned you’re going up to
Bendigo this weekend what are the chances do people have to see the Cuban Melbourne before Nationals um well a lot this year in the past uh we’ve had a few people sort of within the band that have uh not criticized but they’ve sort of mentioned that the band doesn’t perform enough so this year we made sure that we’re going to perform a lot more so we’re doing
Bendigo weekend this weekend and that that will take in rehearsals for the Nationals it’s a bit like a rehearsal weekend but with performance at the end with an audience and that’s together with the city of Greater Bendigo band and also the I think it’s the Maris Brothers concert band not Maris Brothers yes Maris anyway there’s a Catholic
School up there yeah I haven’t been to Bendigo for some time but um yeah so that’s this weekend and then we’ve got two more other performances which we’re doing our pieces at and one of those is at the Melbourne University which is a big concert where sort of a performer in Residence there this year and so we’ve got a concert there with
Matthew Dempsey who’s the first trumpet with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and we’ll be playing our pieces at that concert in collaboration with the University of Melbourne and then our final one is with the Melbourne staff band of the Salvation Army on the 24th of March and that’ll be at the Waverly um core in Glen Waverley and we look forward to that too and again we’ll be playing our
Nationals program there as well so this year I guess so we’ve got you know four or five opportunities to to get up before we get to the to the day so we’ll see how we go but it should be a good running yeah it’s pretty fantastic pretty busy leading up I guess being defending Champion you’ve got to you know really get it out there a fair bit tell me more about this collaboration with the
University of Melbourne how did that come about and what’s involved I think this must be a first surely for an Australian brass band uh yeah I think so we had a bit of a trial about 1998 um where we did a couple of concerts with the university in um in collaboration with the uh the wind Symphony there um but uh nothing sort of became of it until math again
Matthew came back to Melbourne and Matt and I uh were talking about strategies for the year and one of them was that we would approach um Professor Gary McPherson at the University and he has always been a big supporter of brass bands right around the country and and all good music and and one of the things I suppose is that they’re trying to make a link with
Community again and I think that’s a great thing because there’s been a bit of a void there over the years and so the university is very keen now to make that connection with uh with groups in the community and I guess it’s a bit of a trial period and it will probably go for a concert series for this year and next year we’re hoping to maybe be involved with the masters of composition course so that so at the moment it’s involved with the wind
Symphony again for this year is that right this year we’re actually stand alone so we’ve got our own our own concerts there which is sponsored by the the uni and supported by the university and um and we’re having guest soloists for both both events well Mark thanks for joining us tonight and best of luck at Nationals I’m sure all of the
Brass Band viewers hope qban does well once again and we look forward to locking horns with all the bands again and it’s just just great to have everyone come to Melbourne it’s going to be excellent to see everyone again and and the Nationals although you know there can only be one winner everybody in all the a great bands are all friendly and it’s just great to be able to catch up with everyone and have a lemonade or two over the weekend and we look forward to it absolutely
Nationals is a great social event thanks for watching again Mark for joining us thank you Tim [Music] foreign
