News

Our annual Christmas Concert was held in Alton Village Hall on Saturday December  6^th.

This year the event was part of the Alton Extravaganza event, with different activities taking place each evening throughout December. This meant that we attracted some different members in the audience, as well as those who traditionally attend each year. 

Once again, donations and the raffle proceeds were donated to the Douglas Macmillan Hospice.

We have been playing a variety of challenging pieces,  both non Christmas and Christmas music. This provided a varied programme, with short interludes of festive singing, accompanied by our very good friend Rowena. Many thanks to her for coming along and supporting us!

We are now playing from sheet music, which has meant a  steep learning curve for us all. Until recently all of our music has been transposed into numerical score, which many of our group have been playing from for many years.  We were justifiably proud of our achievements, playing a variety of pieces such as the rousing Highland Cathedral (one of our favourites) and gentler Golden Slumbers and Aura Lee.

Festive favourites included Ding Dong Merrily On High, Infant Holy, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and a special compilation entitled Christmas Night. All were tricky arrangements, which sounded so effective. 

The atmosphere created by the appreciative audience, the  decorations and twinkling backdrop, the refreshments, and our uniform of black and red made this a perfect Christmas evening.

On Sunday 30th November we returned to Ellastone Parish Hall for our fourth concert there. It is a lovely hall to play in and we were made very welcome, as ever, with excellent cakes in the interval.

After quite a few weeks rehearsing the Christmas pieces we were very pleased with how we played, particularly in the first half and we had a comment that Wendy's jokes weren't too bad either!

A very pleasant afternoon.

Saturday 22nd March

We were all very pleased to welcome handbell teams from the North West, North East, South West, East Midlands and West Midlands regions of HRGB to our rally in Alton Village Hall. With participants ranging in age from 11 to 85, this rally was a wonderful celebration of music and friendship.

Tea and biscuits were served to all the ringers before the start of the Rally.

The first massed ringing piece we played was conducted by Kate from the North West Region, it was called “Spring”, very appropriate for the time of year. The second mass ringing piece was the “Trumpet Hornpipe” which was conducted by Rowena from the West Midlands. We all enjoyed the malleted rhythms. The other massed ringing pieces were ‘Waltzing Matilda’ conducted by Helen from the NE Region and ‘Golden Slumbers’ conducted by Wendy.

The massed ringing was interspersed with solo pieces played by individual teams. The teams were Dronfield, Kinder, Brailsford, Areley Kings and Alton. Some of the teams were short of ringers.  Some rang 4 in hand and others shared guest ringers to make up numbers. This all added to the sense of community. We enjoyed a lovely array of music including traditional favourites like Cwm Rhonda, Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, Amazing Grace, Knees up Mother Brown, Parade of the Tin Soldiers and Highland Cathedral.

We all took our own lunches and at 3.15 pm we had tea and cake, no fear of us being hungry! Our minds were kept busy with a fun spring / summer quiz created by Ann. The raffle was drawn later and the quiz answers were revealed and called out.

It was all good fun and everyone enjoyed getting together and playing together. Many thanks to Ann for organising it.

Jean Reilly 

We were invited to play our first full team concert for this year at the Alton WI meeting, held in Alton Village hall, on Wednesday February 5^th, at 2.30pm.

The meeting was well attended, and the audience seemed to  appreciate our music.  We played a selection of pieces, which were varied in tone and volume.

We  began with one of our favourites : ‘A grand celebration.’

We all enjoy this piece which which requires us to play both loudly and softly. It does however rise to a rousing crescendo. It’s always a good warm up!

We played some quieter and more sensitive pieces both classical and modern, and finished with another of our favourites ‘Highland Cathedral’. This is a well practiced, but difficult piece which we are proud to perform with confidence. I think that we all enjoyed being able to play our part.

The team is now playing from number and musical score notation which has not always been easy, but we are pleased to have mastered.  It’s always good to rise to a new challenge.

The afternoon ended with  welcome refreshments and thanks from the audience. Although informal, it was a very good run through for performances to come. We all very much enjoyed it.  With thanks to all of the kind members of Alton WI for their warm welcome.

Wednesday 11th December 2024

We were very pleased to be asked to play for the Trentley Probus Group after their Christmas lunch. They were meeting in the Westwood Suite in the Upper House Hotel, Barlaston which was ideal for us to be able to set up with the full team without disturbing their lunch.

We played a mixture of non-Christmas and Christmas pieces. We surprised them a little with the size of the team.  They were very appreciative and a lovely audience and were very interested in the music, bells and chimes.