Fifty Years of Band Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 23

Fifty Years of Band Music

ARK concerts, street parades, hospital recitals-these are but some of the many activities of the 150 or so brass bands in this country. Many of these bands started forty or fifty years ago, and at that time many of them were military bands. That was how the Wellington Tramways Band, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, began. 4 With its woodwind players and additional drummers the military band is perhaps the finest of all types of band. In peacetime, however, it is hard to keep going. The Tramways Band found the going too difficult and after a few years became a purely brass band. Its career since then has been a fruitful one with several competition successes. Under the conductorship of E. Franklin it won the "C" Grade Championship at Wanganui in 1952. Although the band had competed successfully in higher grades in former times, a lean period over several years and the short- | tage of capable players eventually forced the band into the lower section, By winning the local provincial championship in 1953 (open grade), the band confirmed its ability and right to compete once more in a higher grade, and at the Auckland contest in 1954, and again in Invercargill this year, the "Trammies" were runners-up in the "B" grade. The present conductor is N. G. Goffin, who toured England with the National. Band. Many of its members are tramway employees, and a representative of the Tramways Board serves on the band’s committee. The band, incidentally, is anxious to fill in many gaps in its records, and would welcome information, photos, etc., which should be sent to its Secretary, H. A, Ingram, 39 Sidlaw Street, Wellington, W.E.5. In the meantime, listeners will hear the band in an anniversary programme from 2YA on Tuesday, October 30, at 8.0 p.m.