Annual joint gathering with our friends from the North East

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.