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00:00Hi, I'm Sergeant Natalie Lowndes. I've been in the band service for 23 years this September
00:04and this will be my last Mountbatten Festival music. Tell me how it feels to have obviously
00:11done all those years in the band service but also how it feels to be your last Mountbatten Festival.
00:18At the moment I don't think it feels real because it's just day-to-day, it's the same job I've been
00:22doing forever. I think when we get out to London it might get a bit emotional.
00:27And tell me what instrument you play? I am a clarinet player.
00:31And what do you love most about playing the clarinet? Within this job I just love being
00:39part of a large section. We have such a good team, we have good banter and yeah it's good fun.
00:56So tell me what your next move and next career is? So from September this year I will be studying
01:13midwifery university and hopefully going on to become a midwife in the local area in Portsmouth.
01:18Lovely. Have you always been local to Portsmouth? I moved to Portsmouth when I was 12. My dad was in
01:22the one week band service for 36 years so when Deal closed we moved to Portsmouth and I've been
01:29here ever since other than moving around the country on draft. I'm Lance Corporate Bugler
01:33Tom Haynes-Smith and I co-wrote this year's Drum Static on MFM 2025. Fantastic. Tell me how it feels
01:40to have co-written it? It's absolutely brilliant. It was quite a shock actually to turn up to
01:46rehearsals and see everyone playing the part that I wrote and to have it played on MFM this year
01:54is an absolute honour. Brilliant. Tell me how long you've been in the band service? So I've been in
01:58band service just over six years now. I've been to Libsdon band and I arrived at Collingwood band
02:06in September last year. Tell me what you love about it? The travel. I've done some brilliant
02:14trips in my career. We've got some more coming up later on this year so it's probably a highlight
02:20for me. Tell me how it feels to perform in the Mountbatten Festival of Music? It's brilliant.
02:27Not everyone gets to perform in the Royal Albert Hall and so to be there
02:32for the fourth time now is still a brilliant privilege.
02:44I'm Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Williams. I'm the Principal Director of Music Royal Marines.
02:49And tell me how rehearsals have been going? Rehearsals have been going well actually. I
02:56shouldn't sound surprised to say that. Rehearsals have been going really well. We've done a lot of
03:00preparation before this point so all the bands have seen the music. They know what they're
03:04up against so they've had a chance to practice everything. So this has really been about
03:08putting everything together, making sure all the sound is balanced and any fine details are taken
03:14care of. I understand that you've been doing lots of rehearsals. Is anybody who's new to the
03:24festival this year feeling the pressure? There's a lot. There are always new people who've just
03:32come out of training who are doing things for the first time. In fact, one of our soloists
03:36this year has only just passed out of training. He's an exceptional talent, brilliant pianist.
03:41I'm sure they are feeling the pressure. If you don't feel a little bit of pressure
03:46playing in the Royal Albert Hall then you're probably in the wrong job. It's very exciting
03:51though and normally the pressure makes people perform to their best. That's the hope, that you
03:57have a bit of nervous energy that you can take into the performance. Tell me, festivals like
04:03this, is this one of the highlights of being in the band service? Yeah, absolutely. I think the
04:09Royal Albert Hall is such a special place to play and being able to combine three or four Royal
04:15Marines bands together, so you've got over 100 musicians on stage, that's a pretty special
04:20experience for everybody and I think it's something that people really look forward to all year really.