No Tuba

Nobody wants me to play tuba these days, it seems like ages since I last played a tuba in performance; that's not to say that I haven't been playing, I have had my fair share it's just not on tuba.   Of course for the Brass Band I am the stick waver, a position I am still surprised and honoured to hold, and at the Croydn Symphonic Band I am currently on Bass Trombone.   We have had a bit of a change round in the heavy brass section, still looking for a regular Euphonium player we have a "friend" who plays with us when ever he can, on top of that we lost one of our bass players and our bass trombone.   The first trombone is very committed to other things and finds it hard to make every rehearsal, so that leaves our new bass player, just back from Cardiff University, and me.

Having said all that we will be having a full section of three trombones, euphonium and two basses at our concert on Wednesday as well as for the National Concert Band Festival on the 1st of April.   The concert on Wednesday is at the excellent hall at Trinity School, we have played there a couple of times, and the only draw back it has as a venue that I can see is the lack of a bar.   The whole Croydon/Bromley/Sutton area has a real problem in that there is no suitable venue for amateur music outside of school halls.   We have the wonderful Fairfield hall, but this is simply too big, an audience of two or three hundred will just get lost, everything else is a theatre, very good theatres but they all have a presidium arch which causes acoustic chaos for some of us.   What we want are halls like the QEH and the Purcell Room.