The National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain celebrates its 70th birthday with an exciting and challenging programme conducted by Martyn Brabbins

Members of NYBBGB rehearsing during Easter residency (Photo Joy Newbould)

The National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain (NYBBGB) is celebrating its 70th anniversary with a concert at the Royal College of Music on 6 August 2022. Conducted by Martyn Brabbins, (whose earliest musical training was in a brass band), eighty young brass players from across the UK – all aged between 14 and 19  – will come together to perform two of Brabbins' works for brass band, John Pickard’s 1995 symphonic suite Men of Stone, and the world premiere of a piece commissioned for the anniversary, Hyperlink, by Scottish composer Peter Graham. Also in the programme will be masterpieces of the 20th-century brass band repertoire by Eric Ball, Derek Bourgeois and John Ireland, plus a selection of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne with guest soloist Nardus Williams. 

The celebratory concert begins a new chapter in the history of band under the new leadership of CEO Mark Bromley and Director of Artistic Planning Dr Robert Childs, whose recent appointments follow the unexpected death of the band's long-standing administrator Philip Biggs in 2019 and the standing down due to ill health of Artistic Director Bramwell Tovey in 2020.

Remarkably, the band has already achieved a balance in gender equality, with equal numbers of girls and boys generally participating in its Easter and Summer courses, shattering commonly-held perceptions that brass playing is still a male-dominated preserve. It is also working to nurture more female conductors in the sector, including Anna Beresford, who is working alongside Martyn Brabbins in preparing the band for this concert.

Full details from the band's website.