Guest blog: Abingdon Concert Band's Covid-19 story

Under normal circumstances, our weekly rehearsals are really important for us as a social activity as well as an opportunity to make music with like-minded people. Of course, the way our lives have been changed by the pandemic has encouraged us to think of new and creative ways to try and continue with this as much as possible.

We have around 60 regular members and I'd estimate that at least half of them have continued to participate in band events over the last 9 months. This has definitely been more challenging for our older members who aren't so confident with the technology that's required for these new activities, but we've tried our best to keep in touch with everyone.

We've also done what we can to keep the music going. We quickly realised that virtual rehearsals are challenging for a number of reasons. However, lots of us have been able to record ourselves individually playing our parts, and luckily our Musical Director, Neil Brownless, had a combination of time on his hands, and great technical skills to allow him to put together some virtual performance videos.

We really wanted to try and replicate our usual Christmas concert, so over a period of several weeks we prepared some new Christmas videos and this culminated in a live-streamed performance on YouTube on 19th December 2020. The concert featured  some performances recorded at concerts in previous years, alongside some videos from throughout 2020 and some new Christmas videos, including some small ensemble pieces by players from the band.

The live-streamed event was watched by nearly 100 people and the recording available on YouTube has now been watched over 800 times. We are delighted with this positive outcome. As players we particularly enjoyed the opportunity to attend our own Christmas concert as audience members, and of course to celebrate together with a Zoom party afterwards.

The highlight of the year for many of us was that we were able to play carols in socially-distanced quintet groups, outside at Millets Farm. It was very different to usual as we had our Covid risk assessment to bear in mind at all times, and even used 'moisture guards' on our instruments to reduce the distribution of aerosol particles. We still thoroughly enjoyed this chance to play music together and hoped that people were smiling behind their masks as they did their Christmas shopping in such unusual circumstances.

It seems that it will still be a while until we're able to play together, so we have a few more projects planned for this year, including a video performance of the theme to the BBC TV series 'His Dark Materials' which has been arranged especially for us by the composer, Lorne Balfe. We're hoping this will be complete by around the beginning of March.

We're also thinking about how we might be able to return to rehearsals, and are discussing alternative arrangements including socially-distanced small group rehearsals over a rota of several weeks, and even the possibility of playing in an aircraft hangar, which we know some local brass bands managed to do before it got too cold!

We'd love to share more positive stories, so please get in touch at travel@club-europe.co.uk and let us know what your ensemble has been doing during the pandemic.

Click on the link to find out more about all the band tours and choir tours we offer.