Connaught Brass help round off Petworth Festival 2024
Connaught Brass are among the performers as this year’s Petworth Festival comes to a conclusion.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Furet, Group Arts Cidetta at Sussex Newspapers, Petworth
00:07Festival, fabulous event packed full of wonderful musicians and it's fabulous to know that
00:12Connell Brass are heading for Esbourne Church, St Mary's, on Saturday the 27th of July
00:18at midday. Now Connell Brass, exciting history that goes back a while and you've emerged
00:24really strongly from the pandemic haven't you? Being able to pick up a couple of prize
00:29concerts that you were owed before everything shut down?
00:32Yeah no, I mean it was a very fortunate timing really of being able to know that there'd
00:42be something, regardless of how far in the future it would be, that there'd be something.
00:49But yeah, it was nice to sort of feel as though we'd set the group up really as just a group
00:56of friends, students, most of us at the Royal Academy, and yeah be able to set off into
01:04the world eventually once things were possible again.
01:09So that was a good starting point, you were saying since then, post-pandemic, you've moved
01:13to a point where most of the schemes that you're on have finished and you are much more
01:17truly independent as musicians. Do you feel you've put all the groundwork in and ready
01:21to go or is it a bit scary?
01:24I mean I think certainly as an ensemble in terms of the ensemble technique of knowing
01:34how each of us play, how we lead things in etc, those things are very solidly in place
01:41now that when it comes to performance that things are as comfortable and as easy as possible.
01:48But I think yeah, from a sort of like admin logistics perspective, it's perhaps now more
01:54of a conscious effort that needs to go into applying for concerts or approaching festivals,
02:02these sort of things.
02:03But you're doing that from the standpoint of being pretty well established by now, aren't you?
02:07I think so, yeah. It's been very fortunate that the competition we did pre-pandemic,
02:13the Philip Jones competition, with the sort of mentoring and aid of Ursula Jones, we've
02:20been able to really get some fabulous opportunities and sort of, yeah, solidify ourselves in an
02:27ensemble and not just sort of disintegrate as soon as music college is over.
02:33And just a word or two on the programme for Padworth, what do you have in mind? What are you doing?
02:38I mean it's always, when it comes to programming brass quintet, it's one of those, or brass
02:43music in general, that there's a lot of names that audiences have never heard of.
02:50And so it's always trying to strike this balance of introducing audiences to the music that
02:55we know and love as brass players, as well as almost giving something back of, you know,
03:01the names that they'd know.
03:02So when we started the group, I did lots of arrangements of choral music from, you know,
03:09Rachmaninoff, stuff like this that, yeah, these sort of feature a bit in the programme also,
03:15as well as these vocal works by Lili Boulanger, that sort of celebrating her as a composer as well.
03:23Alongside a new commission for the group, this piece called Get Good that we commissioned
03:31not so long ago by Robin Haig, which is an excellent sort of showpiece for brass technique.
03:39Very showy, offy and really puts us through our paces.
03:45So is Padworth part of a busy summer ahead for you?
03:49I mean, it's a mix, I think, because all of us individually are also, you know, freelancers in our own right that,
03:57yeah, trying to, again, sort of strike this balance is interesting.
04:01I think the week before we go on, or a few days before, actually, we go on Radio 3 in June,
04:08sort of promoting this concert and then, yeah, I think in reality, we're sort of quiet over August,
04:16mostly because we're all busy doing other things with different orchestras.
04:21But certainly when it comes to September, it really kicks off again.
04:25So sort of summer break before we, you know, really get into it from September till December.
04:31Sounds the right way to pace yourself. Really lovely to speak to you.
04:35You've had a fabulous time at the Padworth Festival. I hope it all goes brilliantly.
04:38Thanks for your time.
04:40Thank you.