Yorkshire Concertina Club and the North Eastern Concertina Players are launching a new Northern band day, to be held in October in Boston Spa, near Wetherby.
Open to all concertina players it is an opportunity to gather and play band arrangements together under the leadership of NECP's David Turner and YCC's Carolyn Wade, both experienced arrangers and conductors for concertina bands.
YCC Chair Graham Heffernan said: "We regularly travel to the South West and South East to enjoy a band day, and there is also a concertina weekend in Swaledale every year where there is the option to join a scratch band, but no dedicated band event in the North at the moment, so the two clubs together decided it would be a great idea to host one.
"We are hoping that our concertina friends from all over the UK will come along and join us for the day, and perhaps take time to enjoy Yorkshire and the North East too."
Boston Spa is only a short drive from the tourist towns of Knaresborough and Harrogate, and half an hour from York, with lots of accommodation available. There is plenty of parking at the venue, and while tea and coffee will be provided, players should bring their own packed lunch. 
If you are interested in joining the event, please email [email protected]. You will need to be able to read music but the arrangements will be straightforward to include a range of abilities. We all look forward to seeing you there.

At today’s meeting, we had eight members present – Phil, Helen, Ruth W. Russ, Steve, Carolyn, Chris N. & Graham, several apologies – Ruth F. Rhona, Adrian, Chris M. & Jackie– and two prospective new members – Peter Simmonds , who has been a couple of times now and David Reynard who was with us for the first time today.

As Ruth W is also a relatively new member, this was an auspicious occasion for the Club to have several new & newish attenders – welcome again Ruth and welcome Peter & David. We do hope today’s experience was more inspiring than daunting!
For David, as the membership Year is over half-way through, we agreed to leave membership fee payment - £25.00pa - until the AGM in November.

Carolyn started the day as usual with the ‘Band’ session & gave out new music:

‘Ave Maria’; ‘It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie’; ‘Old Comrades’ & ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’.

Carolyn was pleased with how we managed with sight-reading them and all are ‘possibles’ for World Concertina Day, Feb 2026, in the bar downstairs.

After lunch, Graham took a few moments to remember Jenny Cox who died very recently. Jenny was not a YCC Member – she lived in Bristol – but she was absolutely central to the major revival, over recent decades, of the Concertina Band movement. She was an inspiration & encouragement to many of us personally and she will be very sadly missed.

We noted there is a meeting in July (Sun 20th) but several people will be at Banding Together & a few on holiday so it may be a small gathering. We don’t meet in August and for September’s meeting (Sun 21st) we will have the redoubtable English player Michael Jary.

Graham omitted to mention it at the meeting, but - we mustn’t forget that we are invited to the North East Concertina Players’ meeting at Sedgefield, on the Second Sunday in September, starting at 10.00am

Graham asked if anyone wanted to play a solo piece – no takers, but the slot is always available if anyone wishes and any offers will always be warmly received.

Russ then handed out a sheet with two Jeremy Handley tunes:
‘Foster Charlton’ & his Cat & ‘Rowley Burn’, which engendered discussion about style of interpreting these tunes

Graham gave out:
‘Wee Kerry’s Welcome to the Dene’;’ Neil Taylor’s Jig’ & ‘The Keelman Ower Land’.

By coincidence, all five tunes were from the North-East & some were Northumbrian Pipe Tunes.

We finished off with a request from Russ from the YCC Tune-book – Swaledale composed by John Willis & several French Tunes, also from the Tune Book, that had been suggested by Jane Edwards when she ran the Club – ‘Mazurka Limousin’; ‘Ciapa Rousa’; ‘Robin’s Waltz’ & ‘Sans Nom’.

Graham Heffernan – Chair, YCC

Friends of the YCC invited us to play at Wellington Place in Leeds on December 20th as part of their Christmas festivities.
We gathered in a beautifully decorated atrium around an enormous Christmas tree and played carols and Christmas songs for the office workers who were based in the building.
The acoustics were amazing, and for anyone on Facebook, the link takes you to a recording of our performance captured by our friends at Wellington Place.
Many thanks to Paula and her team at WP for inviting us along, it was a lovely way to go into the Christmas holiday season.

Concertina tutor and historian Dave Ball, pictured, was our guest at the October YCC meeting where he talked about music from historic entertainments which had become part of the British folk tune scene. 
This was a fascinating dig into folk music history, accompanied by tunes which the club had a go at.
Tunes included a March from Rinaldo, by Handel, which was first performed in 1711 at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket, and later found its way into the Compleat Dancing Master tune book, which is still used today as a source of dance tunes played in folk sessions.
Other works included:
Three and a Duce, by Steven Storace (libretto by Prince Hoare) from 1794
Orpheus and Eurydice by Theobald, an opera pantomime perfomred in 1740
Poor Soldier by William Shield from a comic opera by O'Keeffe, first performed in 1783.
For those interested in folk music, the tunes will feel very familiar.
Our thanks to Dave for a great meeting, and fascinating discussion about how music follows us through the centuries.

YCC hosted this year's annual joint meeting with our friends from the North-East Concertina Players as part of a tradition going back many years.
Five members of NECP travelled down from their base in Sedgefield on 15th September to join nine of us from YCC in an afternoon exploring band arrangements in a variety of music and styles.
Graham welcomed our NECP guests and after tea, coffee and cake (with help from our friends at our regular venue The Corner House Club and band members) Carolyn picked up the baton as first Conductor of the day with:
 
1. ‘The Rowan Tree’ - composed by Lady Nairne, a beautiful and well-known melody.
2. ‘Danse des Sauvages’ - by Rameau
 
Dave from NECP then kindly conducted us in a piece he had brought (those of us at ‘Banding Together’, Halsway Manor, July 2024 had been introduced by Dave to a version of this):
 
3. ‘I Know, O Virgin Mary’ – an old French Carol, arr. H. B. Gaul & adapted by A. Lumb, with important pauses for musical effect, adeptly conducted by Dave.
 
After lunch we worked on three more pieces chosen by our band leads.
 
From Carolyn :
 
4. ‘ Gavotte’  - from the Holberg Suite by Greig
 
From Dave:
 
5. ‘Il est bel et bon’ – by Pierre Passereau, an amusing-sounding piece, with chickens taking centre stage in the imagery (French Composer, fl. 1509 – 1547). Of Passereau, Wikipedia states that his output was mainly chansons: ‘…most of them were "rustic" in character, similar to patter songs, using onomatopoeia, double entendres, and frequent obscenity, a common feature of popular music in France and the Low Countries in the 1530s’.
 
6. ‘Wedding Waltz’ – by Ymer Lindquist, a contemporary Swedish Composer.
 
The final part of the afternoon involved a play-through of all six pieces, enabling us to reach playing perfection, or to discover entirely new places to make mistakes…(!) This as usual was a fun afternoon with our friends in the North-East and we look forward to meeting again next year in Sedgefield.

At today’s meeting, we had eleven members plus one visitor – David Butcher, who had met Helen & Phil at Cohen’s recent concert. He plays keyboards but was interested in the Concertina & was invited to our meetings. He first came when we played last month in the Bar downstairs for World Concertina Day – welcome David.

Chris Marriott brought his newly-purchased McCann Duet – good luck with that Chris!

In today’s ‘before lunch’ session, Carolyn led us in the following tunes:

- ‘Oom-pah-pah’
- ‘Lambeth Walk’
- ‘Leicester Square Rag’ (New – arranged by Carolyn)
- ‘Domino’ (New – arranged by Carolyn)
- ‘When I’m 64’ (New – arranged by Carolyn)

For our ‘after lunch’ session, as it had been pointed out by Helen that today was St. Patricks’ Day, Graham brought copies of the following Irish tunes:

- ‘The One-Horned Sheep’ (arr: F J Ball)
- ‘Turn Hill’ (a ‘Fling’)
- ‘Waltz for Cathy’ (composed & arranged by Tim Collins)
- Polka Set: ‘Aidan Coffey’s’; ‘Macgillycuddy’s’; ‘The Cobbler’ & ‘Peg Ryan’s
- ‘O’Carolan’s Concerto’ (arr: Robin Garside)

Graham noted upcoming guests booked for the rest of 2024:

April – Nick Barber
June – Alex Wade
October – Dave Ball

And we were reminded that September’s meeting will see us joined by NECP.

Today at our YCC meeting, Sunday 18th February, we had ten members who played in the World Concertina Day gig in the bar downstairs: Adrian, Rhona, Jackie, Helen, Phil, Carolyn, Chris Nelson, Steve, Russ & Graham.

We played 11 pieces and Russ sang three songs which got the audience joining in .

Our pieces were:
1. Oom Pah Pah (Carolyn's arrangement)
2. Chico's Love Song (Steve's arrangement)
3. A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (Steve's arrangement)
4. Lambeth Walk (Carolyn's arrangement)
5. Dwell Not With Me (Carolyn's arrangement)
6. Larpool Hall (Steve's arrangement of Jon Willis's tune)
7. Old Jock's Dance (Steve's arrangement of Jon Willis's tune)
8. Only You (Carolyn's arrangement)
9. Yorkshire Concertina Club Rag (John Willis's own arrangement of his own tune)
10.Liberty Bell March (from YCC Tunebook)
11. Nelly the Elephant (from YCC Tunebook)

October’s meeting of the Yorkshire Concertina Club brought another treat in the form of Rob Say and his newly acquired Rook’s Manuscript.

Rob took us through a lovely selection of tunes from the Northeast. After spending time looking at the Cheviot Rant, Cawledge Burn Rant, as well as the more familiar Morpeth Rant and his own tune Corsenside Hall, we looked at various marches and hornpipes. The March of the Grahams in amongst those, for our very own ‘Grahams’, Helen and Phil!

His enthusiasm for the music and the style of playing from the region was infectious and we all have some new ideas on how to approach and bring the tunes to life.

Rob has been researching the life and works of John Rook from his diaries and a photocopy of the manuscript. The hardback book, “The John Rook Manuscript: The Life of John Rook 1806-1872 & A Full Transcription of his Manuscript”, is the result of this work and he has also produced a smaller book with the collection of music in the manuscript, “The Music of John Rook: Player's Manuscript”.

Following publication of this, the actual manuscript has come to light, and it was an absolute privilege to be able to see the beautifully penned work with the illustrations and annotations from John Rook himself.

​A huge thanks to Rob Say for an interesting, informative and extremely enjoyable afternoon.
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