THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE TELEGRAPH IN 1996 AND GIVES AN INSIGHT
INTO THE ENTHUSIASM OF OUR FOUNDER MR COLIN JONES M.B.E.
INTO THE ENTHUSIASM OF OUR FOUNDER MR COLIN JONES M.B.E.
One man's band
Open your front door in the village of Alveley and you may find a euphonium on your doorstep. It is all part of one man's campaign to build England's biggest village band. Report by Chris Arnot
12:00AM GMT 09 Nov 1996
Ben Male, you feel, is one of life's natural tuba players. He is a burly carpenter and joiner with a voice suggestive of expansive lungs. His booming baritone is put to immediate effect as he arrives for a band rehearsal, lugging his treasured instrument in its bulky case. 'Good morning, sunshine, and how is your day?' he bellows to nobody in particular. The words bounce off the cream walls of the gymnasium at Alveley County Junior School, and roll out through the open door to playing fields thickly carpeted with dew.
Although it is just after 8.30am on Saturday, the gym's polished parquet floor is rapidly disappearing beneath chairs and music stands. The noise is deafeningly discordant. Nearly 70 instruments are being tuned up at once. Ben is in the back row, cheeks bulging as he breathes life into £3,000-worth of intricate, gleaming brasswork.
Born to it, you might think. Yet he was 60 when he finally realised his ambition to play a wind instrument. One morning, he found a brand-new tuba on his doorstep with a note instructing him to, 'Go and have a blow on it. Just make a noise with it.'
The man who sent it was the man who has just entered the school gym, raised a baton and commanded respectful silence. Step forward Colin Jones MBE, 64, graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, former colliery clerk and, more recently, music teacher and band-leader extraordinaire. He is known in this part of Shropshire as 'the Pied Piper'. Children follow him around, tugging at his sleeve and asking, 'Got any instruments, Mr Jones?'
Instruments galore have passed through his hands in the 12 months since he was awarded a National Lottery grant of £44,500, topped up by £5,000 from Bridgnorth District Council - a reward for the five years he spent building Alveley Village Band into the biggest in England.
Open your front door in the village of Alveley and you may find a euphonium on your doorstep. It is all part of one man's campaign to build England's biggest village band. Report by Chris Arnot
12:00AM GMT 09 Nov 1996
Ben Male, you feel, is one of life's natural tuba players. He is a burly carpenter and joiner with a voice suggestive of expansive lungs. His booming baritone is put to immediate effect as he arrives for a band rehearsal, lugging his treasured instrument in its bulky case. 'Good morning, sunshine, and how is your day?' he bellows to nobody in particular. The words bounce off the cream walls of the gymnasium at Alveley County Junior School, and roll out through the open door to playing fields thickly carpeted with dew.
Although it is just after 8.30am on Saturday, the gym's polished parquet floor is rapidly disappearing beneath chairs and music stands. The noise is deafeningly discordant. Nearly 70 instruments are being tuned up at once. Ben is in the back row, cheeks bulging as he breathes life into £3,000-worth of intricate, gleaming brasswork.
Born to it, you might think. Yet he was 60 when he finally realised his ambition to play a wind instrument. One morning, he found a brand-new tuba on his doorstep with a note instructing him to, 'Go and have a blow on it. Just make a noise with it.'
The man who sent it was the man who has just entered the school gym, raised a baton and commanded respectful silence. Step forward Colin Jones MBE, 64, graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, former colliery clerk and, more recently, music teacher and band-leader extraordinaire. He is known in this part of Shropshire as 'the Pied Piper'. Children follow him around, tugging at his sleeve and asking, 'Got any instruments, Mr Jones?'
Instruments galore have passed through his hands in the 12 months since he was awarded a National Lottery grant of £44,500, topped up by £5,000 from Bridgnorth District Council - a reward for the five years he spent building Alveley Village Band into the biggest in England.
Nobody has ever been refused entry. You could be tone-deaf with several fingers missing and still get a welcome from Jones. 'I've never found anyone I couldn't get a note out of,' he says with his distinctive Salopian lilt. There are 90 members - more than the average symphony orchestra - and 95 per cent of them live in this former mining community of 2,000 people that nestles in the beautiful Severn Valley between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth.
LAST MONTH, the band wedged itself into the ancient parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Alveley, for a special concert. Four members of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra joined in. At one point, band and star guests were conducted by Judith Weir, the CBSO's composer-in-residence, who took the time to write what she called a 'short piece' to accommodate the disparate talents at her disposal. She is used to dealing with gifted individuals at the peak of their artistic achievement: Sir Simon Rattle in Birmingham, for instance, and Sir Peter Hall in London. She wrote the music for Hall's production of the Oedipus plays at the Royal National Theatre. So why on earth did she want to work with a village band? |
Because she was asked to. Jones approached the CBSO, which has a policy of dispatching its musicians beyond Birmingham's Symphony Hall and into the schools and community centres of the Midlands. Along with violinist Cathy Arlidge, clarinetist Mark O'Brien, percussionist Peter Hill and trombonist Alwyn Green, Judith Weir first travelled out to Alveley for a Sunday afternoon rehearsal in July.
She was astonished and impressed. Astonished by the sheer scale of it: 'They have more tubas than any orchestra, a great number of flutes and clarinets and five electric guitars!' And impressed by their evident enthusiasm: 'To see this band in such incredible health was a big reminder of what's important - the communal experience of making music.'
Novices are accommodated alongside accomplished musicians, seven-year-olds, 72-year-olds, middle-aged female flautists and a male teenage guitarist with a ponytail, two earrings and a T-shirt dedicated to a heavy-metal band. In fact, there are at least half a dozen teenagers who are not only conscious at 8.30am on a Saturday but joining in rehearsals with gusto. Ask any of them why, and they all point to their leader.
Music was bred into Jones's bones from an early age. His grandfather conducted the local colliery band; his father played the cornet and euphonium. A brilliant future seemed assured when he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy. Alas, he had to leave London as soon as he qualified: his father was seriously ill and unable to work. It was up to Jones Junior to support the family.
Although he worked in the office at the local pit, he insisted on going under-ground every day: 'I loved the smell down there and I loved the men,' he says. 'Every year we had a rally which ended in the Methodist chapel where I played Bach's Fugue in D Minor. Very emotional and soul-stirring it was.'
The colliery closed in the late Sixties and, for the next 30 years, Jones worked as a music teacher in Telford. He was a commuter, like so many residents of rural England. Only when he took early retirement six years ago did he set about 'putting something back into the village'. His initial advertisement in the local paper attracted 20 prospective band members. So how did it more than quadruple in size?
Put that down to Jones's legendary powers of persuasion, his ability to coax music from the most unlikely sources and revive long-buried ambitions. Gerard Hopkins, for instance, a care assistant, always suspected that he had a sense of rhythm. But he reached 40 without ever picking up a drum stick. Today he is an accomplished percussionist. 'Colin just sent a set of drums round to my house,' he says. 'The lad next door plays in a rock band and I had to ask him to put them together for me.'
The lottery grant has obviously given Colin Jones some leverage when it comes to recruitment. His limited collection of ancient instruments has been superseded; he can now seduce the most reluctant volunteers with virginal strings and gleaming brass.
Consider the case of Elaine Lowe, an office manager of 39 who said goodbye to her euphonium when she left school. One day she opened her front door and found a brand-new model begging to be picked up. 'I couldn't get a note out of it for three weeks,' she says. 'But Colin has a way of making you feel like the world's best. Rehearsals have become addictive now. It doesn't matter if I've been out to a nightclub until four in the morning, I have to be here. I can always join the queue at Sainsbury's later on,' she adds before joining Ben Male and the formidable brass blasters on the back row.
As one seasoned observer has said of Alveley's village band, 'The string section may be a little lightweight, but in other areas it makes Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand look like a string quartet.'
She was astonished and impressed. Astonished by the sheer scale of it: 'They have more tubas than any orchestra, a great number of flutes and clarinets and five electric guitars!' And impressed by their evident enthusiasm: 'To see this band in such incredible health was a big reminder of what's important - the communal experience of making music.'
Novices are accommodated alongside accomplished musicians, seven-year-olds, 72-year-olds, middle-aged female flautists and a male teenage guitarist with a ponytail, two earrings and a T-shirt dedicated to a heavy-metal band. In fact, there are at least half a dozen teenagers who are not only conscious at 8.30am on a Saturday but joining in rehearsals with gusto. Ask any of them why, and they all point to their leader.
Music was bred into Jones's bones from an early age. His grandfather conducted the local colliery band; his father played the cornet and euphonium. A brilliant future seemed assured when he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy. Alas, he had to leave London as soon as he qualified: his father was seriously ill and unable to work. It was up to Jones Junior to support the family.
Although he worked in the office at the local pit, he insisted on going under-ground every day: 'I loved the smell down there and I loved the men,' he says. 'Every year we had a rally which ended in the Methodist chapel where I played Bach's Fugue in D Minor. Very emotional and soul-stirring it was.'
The colliery closed in the late Sixties and, for the next 30 years, Jones worked as a music teacher in Telford. He was a commuter, like so many residents of rural England. Only when he took early retirement six years ago did he set about 'putting something back into the village'. His initial advertisement in the local paper attracted 20 prospective band members. So how did it more than quadruple in size?
Put that down to Jones's legendary powers of persuasion, his ability to coax music from the most unlikely sources and revive long-buried ambitions. Gerard Hopkins, for instance, a care assistant, always suspected that he had a sense of rhythm. But he reached 40 without ever picking up a drum stick. Today he is an accomplished percussionist. 'Colin just sent a set of drums round to my house,' he says. 'The lad next door plays in a rock band and I had to ask him to put them together for me.'
The lottery grant has obviously given Colin Jones some leverage when it comes to recruitment. His limited collection of ancient instruments has been superseded; he can now seduce the most reluctant volunteers with virginal strings and gleaming brass.
Consider the case of Elaine Lowe, an office manager of 39 who said goodbye to her euphonium when she left school. One day she opened her front door and found a brand-new model begging to be picked up. 'I couldn't get a note out of it for three weeks,' she says. 'But Colin has a way of making you feel like the world's best. Rehearsals have become addictive now. It doesn't matter if I've been out to a nightclub until four in the morning, I have to be here. I can always join the queue at Sainsbury's later on,' she adds before joining Ben Male and the formidable brass blasters on the back row.
As one seasoned observer has said of Alveley's village band, 'The string section may be a little lightweight, but in other areas it makes Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand look like a string quartet.'