It was back in 2009 that the Dobcross Silver Band appointed Grenville Moore as their M.D. Being a teacher, Grenville decided that there was a void in the banding set-up at Dobcross. Although we had a thriving Youth Band, there was nothing in place for teaching adults. So, without a care of what he was creating, he did a little advertising and started the Adult Learner Group.
The majority of the people who turned up didn’t know one end of a brass instrument from the other and some even questioned whether they were mains or battery. Some did have music reading skills from the past but even so a very daunting task had begun. Gren soon had the group making a noise by getting them to blow down the right end and it was not long before he had them playing simple tunes.
But just as he was making progress, he was hit by a change in his workload at school. This left him unable to commit to the Learner Group on top of the Silver Band so he searched round for someone gullible to help out for a few weeks and espied Phil Cumberworth. A few weeks turned into months and now, over year on, the group has grown to 19 members of which all but three are women.
Their first public appearance as a group came during the Silver Band’s “Brass on the Grass” concert on the village green. They only performed three short numbers and they were surprisingly well received. However, we were very fortunate in that we were playing downwind from the audience. Prior to this concert a few of the band had joined the Silver Band on their Whit Sunday and Whit Friday processions.
The Band, now considering themselves as semi-professional, wanted their own identity and eventually came up with the Dobcross Brass Monkeys. They were just practising for an hour on Monday nights but with a group so large it just wasn’t enough. So on Thursday nights they took up residence in St.Thomas Church, Delph until the Bowlers moved out of the Club at Easter. Along came Christmas and their first carol service (at St.Thomas’s of course). They also performed their first full concert in Dobcross Band Club. This was very well attended and must have cost the band a fortune in family bribes.
The Band is presently practising marches for this year’s processions and preparing concert material for Brass on the Grass and a concert at Boarshurst Band Club. The band still has a few spare instruments so if you fancy a go please pay us a visit.
