National Band Begins Week Of Training

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30635, 29 December 1964, Page 12

National Band Begins Week Of Training

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, Dec. 28. The 1965 National Band of New Zealand began a week’s training in New Plymouth today. The musical director, Mr N. A. Thorn, of Dunedin, watched bandsmen struggling with a new style of drill on a New Plymouth Girls’ High School ground. He had been worried whether he could “get the response” from the biggestever national band. His worries ended at the first musical rehearsal last night “The response was there right from the start,” he said.

The week in New Plymouth will be no holiday for the bandsmen, drawn from 27 bands. Their schedule is: “Reveille” 6.15 a.m.; breakfast 7.15; marching 8.15 till 10; musical rehearsal 10 till 12 and 1.30 p.m. to 3.30; marching 4 till 5; musical rehearsal 7.30 till 9.30.

The only break in the schedule will be next Saturday, when the band will give its first concert at the Girls’ High School assembly hall, and on Sunday when it will give a display at Pukekura Park.

The drill routine, comparatively new to brass bands, will be more spectacular than the normal quickstep, according to the National Brass Band president, Mr E. Ormrod, of Wellington.

The instructor is the Blenheim bandmaster, Mr E. Mus-

grove, who was successful as drum major of the City of Wellington Highland Pipe Band. The bandsmen will return home after the week in New Plymouth, assemble again in February for the Pan-Pacific Arts Festival in Christchurch, come together again for a New Zealand tour in July and leave New Zealand in August for a tour of the United States and Canada.