Yorkshire Music

Hi here are Max and Joni about music in Yorkshire. It was a very difficult topic but we found some information about the music scene and the brass band in Yorkshire.

1.)Max Schäfer: Yorkshire music, Brass Bands, YBS
2.)Jonathan Schopp: Museum of Instruments and Yorkshire Wind Orchestra


Part number one by Max Schäfer:

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Yorkshire Music

Sheffield is the home of several well-known bands and musicians. In 1989 the techno label Warp Records was founded in Sheffield. It was the central pillar of the Yorkshire Bleeps and Bass scene of the 1990s and has become one of Britain’s oldest and best-loved dance music labels. The city is also the home of a lot of nightclubs including Gatecrasher One, one of the most popular nightclubs in the north of England.

Also some popular people were born in Sheffield, like Def Leppard, Joe Cocker, The Longpigs, and the free improvisers Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley.

In 1998 Gomez won the Mercury Music Prize award. Some of the founding members went to Sheffield University. The Arctic Monkeys, who have recently exploded onto the UK music scene and won the Mercury Music Prize for the fastest selling debut album of all times.

The City is also the base for a well developed and thriving unsigned music scene.

Sheffield also has a small Hip/Hop and R’n’B music scene and is home to artists like:

NoXcuse, Hoodz Underground, The Red Eye Knights and Constant Creation, they are part of the Yorkshire Hip Hop scene.

In 1999 the National Centre for Popular Music, a museum dedicated to the subject of popular music, was opened.

Sheffield has a number of local orchestras including the Hallam Sinfonia, Sheffield Symphony Orchestra, the Sheffield Chamber Orchestra, the Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra and the City of Sheffield Youth Orchestra. There are also many choirs within Sheffield including Sheffield Cathedral Choir, The University of Sheffield Singers' Society, Hallam Choral Society, Sheffield Bach Society and Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus.

Brass Bands

The brass bands are famous in Britain but in the north of England (Yorkshire) the brass bands are as famous as the football teams. Many factories and coal mines have their own bands. In 1996 the film director Mark Hartmann made a film about one of these bands. Brassed Off is set in the imaginary Yorkshire village of Grimley in 1992 and tells two stories: one of the village’s pit, which is going to be closed, the other of the pit’s band and the national competition they are taking part in, which finishes at the Albert Hall in London.

The British music scene is extremely varied. There are many different types of music and groups that you can enjoy. If you want to, you can go to a techno night at the local club on Friday, a classical concert on Saturday and see a reggae band live on stage on Sunday.

It’s difficult for groups in Britain to have lots of fans or sell lots of records because there are so many different types of music. There are even more types than are listened above. Bands do not last long and very few groups stay in the Top 20, a list of the best-selling records, for more than one or two weeks. Even if they are in the Top 20, it does not necessarily mean that they sell many records.

YBS

YBS – the former Yorkshire Building Society Band has, for the last decade, been the most successful of all contesting brass bands. It has also been amongst the most innovative with its highly acclaimed CDs and its concert projects, created through close collaboration between conductor and the various composers.

Yorkshire Building Society Band grew out of the former Hammonds Sauce Works Band when, in 1993, this band’s 33-year sponsorship ended. There were, at the time, three Hammonds bands and the Building Society, whose headquarters were quite close to the location of the sauce works, agreed to sponsor them all. With slight name changes there were now, in addition to the main band, YBS Hawley Band and YBS Juniors. The name Hawley referred to the former managing director of Hammonds . The first conductor of Yorkshire Building Society Band was Geoffrey Whitham, who had been associated with Hammonds Sauce Works Band for almost 30 years. He was succeeded by the young Australian conductor, David King, who was to lead the band to unprecedented heights.

‘YBS’ has an impressive pedigree, with an unbroken sequence of 73 years under various names, and roots going back 150 years to when, in 1855, a brass band was formed as one of the amenities for the people of Saltaire. This was one of the famous ‘model villages’ built during the first half of the 19th century by wealthy industrialists and was the brainchild of Sir Titus Salt, a philanthropic mill-owner and one-time Mayor of Bradford.

Part number two by Jonathan Schopp: