This weekend the band made a happy return to Crystal Palace Bowl as part of the Sunday Sounds programme. We performed on the concert platform overlooking the pond to an audience scattered over the lawns enjoying a stroll, a picnic, or just taking in the sunshine and the music. It was a thrill for the band to play on the same stage where Tom Jones, Billy Ocean, Grace Jones and Gary Numan will appear over the course of the summer.
Our programme freewheeled across the theme from The Sweeney, to a setting of the hymn tune Make Me A Channel of Your Peace written for the band by MD Jim Lynch. With Whit Friday almost upon us, it felt like a good time to throw a spotlight on some of our favourite marches, so we opened with J A Greenwood’s True and Trusty to set the mood and also played Men of Harlech and Castell Coch by ‘Welsh March King’ T J Powell.
We finished the first half of our concert with a spirited rendition of Dave Clark Five’s Glad All Over in homage to Crystal Palace FC’s upcoming appearance in the Conference League final in Leipzig against Spanish team Rayo Vallecano. The piece was arranged for the band by tuba player (and Palace fan!) Richard Lovett.
This year the Band celebrates its 125th anniversary and we’ll be marking it with a concert later in the year. In 1901, the same year the band was founded as the Upper Norwood Temperance Band, the FA Cup Final was held in Crystal Palace Park, very close to where we played on Sunday. The match drew a record crowd of over 110,000 people — enormous even by modern standards – and the Crystal Palace Company would often engage a brass band for a large public event. So returning to play at the Park, we had to wonder if playing music for football at Crystal Palace Park might possibly have been one of the band’s earliest engagements all those years ago?
Many thanks to our friends and the volunteers at Crystal Palace Park Trust. We hope to see you again soon! It was a pleasure to take part in this event which was made possible thanks to a grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to National Lottery players. To see a full listing of the Park’s Sunday Sounds programme click here
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