My Reed Band- Members Memories and Highlights
The memories of the band members on this page are extracts taken from the book 'Amang reeds an'brasses' The book which tells the story of the Reed Band's first 50 years.
Much more than music-making
By Seonaid Anderson, Vice President LRB
I joined the Reed Band on the Tuesday following Marches Day in 1995 after some gentle persuasion from long-serving member Euan Cutler and his daughter Laura. The following Friday saw me doing my first job with the band at Bo’ness Fair. I was used to marching, having been brought up in the Girls’ Brigade and I was used to playing the clarinet, but combining the two was an interesting experience to start with. I seemed to cope relatively well, although I do recall an argument with the traffic island outside Tesco.
In April 1996, to mark the band's 40th anniversary, we had a joint concert with the 52nd Lowland Brigade (Territorial) band, which was a great experience for me as a young player. We went to the TA hall in East Claremont Street in Edinburgh for a practice, and then the TA joined us for a practice in Queen Margaret Hall before the concert in St Michael’s.
That August we headed to Inverness for a weekend to formally celebrate the 40th Anniversary. We left early on the Saturday morning and played at the Eastgate Centre before heading to the hotel in Drumnadrochit. I seem to remember some heated conversation about whether we would be able to catch the Tattoo on the TV that night. However, the evening saw us enjoy a lovely meal followed by a ceilidh, then some late night drinking. The next day gave us an opportunity to wander around Drumnadrochit and have our photos taken with the models of the Loch Ness monster, before heading to Bught Sports Centre for a performance at a Flower Show. Then we headed down the road, stopping for some food in Aviemore. A fine karaoke entertained us all the way home – a highlight I remember is everyone singing their parts to Moray Firth just before we re-entered Linlithgow.
In those days, December was a particularly busy month for the band, with carol playing in Bo’ness and Linlithgow High Streets as well as at St Michael’s Hospital. I also remember playing for Dr Barnardo's at Waverley Station one year with a jumper on under my band jacket (one of the benefits of the tunic style!).
The year 1997 saw us fulfil our usual range of engagements, although we had the addition of an extra march for the Free Colliers in September. This event, to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the battle of Stirling Brig, involved us marching over Stirling Brig and then up the hill to the foot of the Wallace Monument. Playing up that hill proved a challenge for quite a number of the band! I remember showing everyone where I would be living when, on the next day, I started my studies at Stirling University.
When I first joined the band the bright red tunics were a fairly new innovation and at that time, no hats were worn with them. A great debate took place about which style of hat would be most suitable. Throughout my first few years in the band a succession of hats was placed on my head at odd moments to get a perspective on how they looked on a female head! This was usually done with no warning, with the hat just appearing from behind – much to the amusement of whoever I was talking to at the time. Some were more controversial than others, and Ewan Cutler and Jimmy Williamson also modelled a whole collection of styles, including bearskins borrowed from the Scots Guards at Bo’ness Fair. Eventually we settled for the peaked caps that we are all so familiar with now.
One social event I remember well is the 1998 trip to Crieff. We headed there on a Sunday afternoon in late August and played a concert in the bandstand in Macrosty Park before having some free time (generally spent in the pub) followed by High Tea at the Drummond Arms.
In 1999 I went on my first foreign trip with the band to Germany, staying at Kamp Bornhofen in the Rhineland. The stories from that trip alone could fill a book, but my favourites include:
o Playing rugby outside the ferry terminal in Amsterdam. Lynn McIntyre had lost her passport and while we waited on her getting a replacement, Wilson Ross organised an impromptu game of rugby.
o The bus being unable to get back under the railway bridge near the hotel once it had unloaded.
o Almost being arrested for photographing a bank building in Luxembourg.
o Gary Laing, Walter Millar and Jimmy Williamson selling the band members soft toilet roll they bought in a local shop because the hotel toilet roll was slightly rough.
o Highland Dancing as well as playing with the band – this was to give the band a rest. I just about needed an oxygen mask by the end of it!
Some band members will remember that in my younger days I was a bit accident-prone. This was highlighted when I fell at the feet of a police officer whilst in the middle of Camelon Mariners' Day. I got quite a ribbing for the fact that the policeman nearly went right over the top of me! Another potential accident was had on our way to Queensferry Fair one year. I was travelling with George Beattie when we approached the Echline roundabout, which in those days didn’t have traffic lights. George became slightly disorientated and started to drive round the roundabout the wrong way, until we started yelling at him to go the right way! Although they have never caused us an accident, I now get slightly apprehensive if we don’t have an ambulance disrupt the parade at one of the Deacons' nights, as they always seem to make an appearance at some stage in the Marches proceedings.
In later years I have had the privilege of teaching some of our new learners. This has been challenging and entertaining. From young Paul, whose hands weren’t quite big enough to hold the clarinet, to Klaus, a more elderly gentleman who already played a number of instruments, but was keen to add the clarinet to his list, some fifteen players have attended lessons at one point or another. It gives me great pleasure to see some of them now enjoying playing with the ‘real’ band.
A lot of things have changed during my time with the band. When I started I was one of fewer than 10 females in the band, whereas now the gender balance is more equal. A number of characters have had to hang up their instruments due to illness or old age – Jimmy Hamilton, Jim Scotland, Wendy and Ronnie Blakey, Joe Kilgallon and Jim McKenna to name but a few. Happily, new characters have joined to help fill their boots. Music has come and gone from the March pad. We have even become a charity now.
Over the years the band has provided me with many things. It is much more to me than some place to go and practise music. Even now that I live 40 miles away in Fife, I would not consider giving up my weekly trips to the band. A lot of that has to do with the characters, both young and old, that make up the Reed Band and give it its friendly and welcoming approach. Long Live the Reed Band! I hope I will still be playing when the band celebrates its Centenary!
From Baroque to the back row
By Alisoun Morton
I came to LRB from a background of classical and baroque music. When Fred Frayling-Kelly asked me to play oboe on a trip to Germany in 1985, it was a revelation that playing music need not be deadly serious or high in aspiration.
I survived the culture shock of the concert/military band repertoire and relished the opportunity to play clarinet extensively with the band and to learn about a whole new musical activity, namely marching around. What an unnatural way of playing any instrument, with music wobbling on a lyre and embouchure endangered by every pothole, but there is surely more camaraderie in getting droukit and forfochen together than in sitting demurely in a classical music ensemble. There is also the fun of watching people change personality when they put on a uniform, like getting into the driving seat of a car.
The back of the band was a happy place to march. John Duncan was there on clarinet, with an unquenchable twinkle in his eye, always able to surround himself with girls and always in good humour, except when he once referred to the band treasurer as a ‘conniving b…..d’ (he later retracted the reference to parentage). There were strong players, well capable of competing with the cornet section, although harmony parts were regrettably thin on the ground because everybody enjoyed playing the melody altissimo.
The job I probably enjoyed most was the band’s performance of Handel’s Firework Music, with fireworks, on the occasion of the Burgh's 600th anniversary in 1989. There was a lovely oboe part in the arrangement and the clarinets got the dotted quaver/semiquaver rhythm right on the night.
My subsequent move into the male-dominated ‘heavy’ section to play trombone – and into the front row of the marching line-up – was indeed a test of love and loyalty to the band. But community bands are all about social education, shaking down young and old, deft and dysfunctional, grumpy and good-natured, into a working team. LRB is characterised by its lack of conformists, like the sextet that marched single-file, playing, from Bo’ness Academy to their cars one wet Fair Day or the cornet player who can always find a willing household to dispense liquid hospitality to the band. Then there are the players that keep the show on the road at all costs – Jimmy Hamilton, who saved the band from carrying odd bits of music by making up the ‘Tartan books’ with tartan-patterned cardboard from his workplace; Eddie McKenna, who turned out with the soprano saxophone when there were no cornets at Ratho and Newbridge Gala; and Alex Grant, who played through Bo’ness Fair non-stop when there were no other first cornet players there. There are also the younger members who have grown up with the band and stayed on, not necessarily for any accruing glory – folk like Calum and Gary Laing, Yvonne (née Bryan) and Martin Byrne, Walter Millar, Sharon Laird and Seonaid Anderson.
We are a great team and the equable command of Eddie McKenna has supported us all through many kittle situations over the years. The band is a wonderful place to make friends, although nobody is afraid to speak their mind openly.
What of the next 50 years for the ‘band birds’? Carolyn McSherry is now the longest-serving female, having joined in 1984. Lady committee members are on the increase and the only sections currently without any lassies are the percussion and tubas. One day there may be an all-female front row – how will the lads take to that? The band had a female secretary in the 1980s and now again has one. Wendy Blakey and myself struck a blow for feminism when we nominated ourselves for the Loving Cup at the second Deacons’ Parade in 1990. Jacqui Dignan waved the stick as assistant conductor in the 80s, but I wonder when the Reed Band will be ready for its first full-time lady conductor?
"Hail The Gallant"
By Walter Millar
Hail the Gallant Rosie Posie to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic has been the anthem of Linlithgow Rose supporters, since it was written by Andrew Hunter in 1964. The Reed Band has played it at important Scottish Cup ties at Prestonfield on a number of occasions, the most notable perhaps being the titanic clash in 1994 with great rivals Bo'ness United.
Since as far back as I can remember, my Dad would take me to Prestonfield to watch the Rose and cheer on legends like Leslie Donaldson, Big Mick Reynolds, Tommy Ure and my next door neighbour, Stewart Park. Parkie also played cornet with the Reed Band and his dad Willie was the treasurer and played the cymbals. So, you could say that, in my mind, the Rose and the Band have always had a connection.
After years of being reminded of the Rose's glorious 1965 Scottish Junior Cup victory by my Dad, Uncle Tommy and other members of the family, in 2002 it was the turn of the current generation to follow in their footsteps to what we hoped would be another famous Cup Final victory. The band hired a bus and we travelled west to the home of Partick Thistle, along with what seemed to be most of the town. Confidence was high and arrangements had already been made for the triumphant return to Linlithgow. Hail the Gallant had been rehearsed in the band hall the previous Tuesday and members had been informed of the time and place for the start of the homecoming parade. Sure enough, the Rose did not disappoint and a 1-0 victory over Auchinleck Talbot ensured we travelled back in jubilation.
The victory parade was due to start at the Bridge Inn and as the team bus rolled up with the Scottish Cup proudly displayed in the front window, the players transferred to an open-topped double decker. Incidentally, I had only ever witnessed this scene once before when, in 1984, under protest, I was made to go over the Flints by my Mum - a native Bo'nessian - to watch our near-neighbours come home in triumph after their Cup win. But now it was our turn! The weather, which had been dull and rainy for most of the day, suddenly brightened and as we left the Brig, the clouds had broken and the sun was shining through.
After a pre-match warm up of the tune, we marched eastwards. All along the way people joined the procession, just like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, until we finally reached the Cross, where thousands of townsfolk were waiting to catch a glimpse of the famous trophy, one of the oldest in world football. To me, it was reminiscent of the 5pm finale on Marches Day. And there was only one tune the crowd wanted to hear!
After a few bars of Hail the Gallant, the crowd started quietly singing "There's no' a team in Scotland that can beat the Lithgae Rose”. By the time we completed the tune for the first time, everyone along the route was singing and the song was ringing up and down the High Street. We played it over and over again down to the Low Port and back up to the Cross, where the team and the cup were safely installed at the Burgh Halls to be congratulated by Provost David Rae of the Deacons' Court.
I must admit that things started to get a bit hazy after this, as the band retired to celebrate a glorious day. They say that good things come in threes and in 2002, they did for me. The Rose winning the Cup, being part of the band on the victory parade, and marrying my wife Gail. Just like that TV advert, priceless!
A lifetime ambition fulfilled
By Christopher Mutch
Not many eight year olds can claim to have fulfilled their lifelong ambition, but when I joined the Linlithgow Reed Band, I could. Having been taught the clarinet by long serving band member, John Duncan, he persuaded me to join the junior section to improve my rhythm. For many years I was lucky enough to work with the junior band conductor Tommy Rumney, and to this day I attempt to apply the skills and knowledge he passed to me.
At the age of nine, I progressed to the main band, and throughout my musical career, I have never been as nervous as I was at my first rehearsal. With so many characters sitting around me, however, I soon learned that being part of the Reed Band was a positive learning experience in many ways. My musical ability was stretched and I quickly improved. My social skills were called upon and I had to learn to interact with many different people. For me, the Reed Band was and still is not just a musical part of Linlithgow, but an institution that fosters a community spirit through its music. It educates and it entertains, and through its music, it provides opportunities for the town's people.
I studied music at the University of Glasgow and gained a Bachelor of Music degree with honours. I am now training to be a music teacher at Strathclyde University. As I teach young people, I can only hope that they are provided with an opportunity to work with a similar organisation. The commitment to my musical education from the conductor Joe Lavery was obvious from day one, with him forever looking to improve my playing and musicality. With his continued support, and the presence of an enthusiastic ensemble, I am sure that without the Reed Band, I would not be a musician today. I have many happy memories from my last 15 years in the band, and look forward to many more years of continued enjoyment. I would encourage any young musicians to join the band as it provides a platform for many musical experiences that are unique, educational, and most importantly, fun.
Much more than music-making
By Seonaid Anderson, Vice President LRB
I joined the Reed Band on the Tuesday following Marches Day in 1995 after some gentle persuasion from long-serving member Euan Cutler and his daughter Laura. The following Friday saw me doing my first job with the band at Bo’ness Fair. I was used to marching, having been brought up in the Girls’ Brigade and I was used to playing the clarinet, but combining the two was an interesting experience to start with. I seemed to cope relatively well, although I do recall an argument with the traffic island outside Tesco.
In April 1996, to mark the band's 40th anniversary, we had a joint concert with the 52nd Lowland Brigade (Territorial) band, which was a great experience for me as a young player. We went to the TA hall in East Claremont Street in Edinburgh for a practice, and then the TA joined us for a practice in Queen Margaret Hall before the concert in St Michael’s.
That August we headed to Inverness for a weekend to formally celebrate the 40th Anniversary. We left early on the Saturday morning and played at the Eastgate Centre before heading to the hotel in Drumnadrochit. I seem to remember some heated conversation about whether we would be able to catch the Tattoo on the TV that night. However, the evening saw us enjoy a lovely meal followed by a ceilidh, then some late night drinking. The next day gave us an opportunity to wander around Drumnadrochit and have our photos taken with the models of the Loch Ness monster, before heading to Bught Sports Centre for a performance at a Flower Show. Then we headed down the road, stopping for some food in Aviemore. A fine karaoke entertained us all the way home – a highlight I remember is everyone singing their parts to Moray Firth just before we re-entered Linlithgow.
In those days, December was a particularly busy month for the band, with carol playing in Bo’ness and Linlithgow High Streets as well as at St Michael’s Hospital. I also remember playing for Dr Barnardo's at Waverley Station one year with a jumper on under my band jacket (one of the benefits of the tunic style!).
The year 1997 saw us fulfil our usual range of engagements, although we had the addition of an extra march for the Free Colliers in September. This event, to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the battle of Stirling Brig, involved us marching over Stirling Brig and then up the hill to the foot of the Wallace Monument. Playing up that hill proved a challenge for quite a number of the band! I remember showing everyone where I would be living when, on the next day, I started my studies at Stirling University.
When I first joined the band the bright red tunics were a fairly new innovation and at that time, no hats were worn with them. A great debate took place about which style of hat would be most suitable. Throughout my first few years in the band a succession of hats was placed on my head at odd moments to get a perspective on how they looked on a female head! This was usually done with no warning, with the hat just appearing from behind – much to the amusement of whoever I was talking to at the time. Some were more controversial than others, and Ewan Cutler and Jimmy Williamson also modelled a whole collection of styles, including bearskins borrowed from the Scots Guards at Bo’ness Fair. Eventually we settled for the peaked caps that we are all so familiar with now.
One social event I remember well is the 1998 trip to Crieff. We headed there on a Sunday afternoon in late August and played a concert in the bandstand in Macrosty Park before having some free time (generally spent in the pub) followed by High Tea at the Drummond Arms.
In 1999 I went on my first foreign trip with the band to Germany, staying at Kamp Bornhofen in the Rhineland. The stories from that trip alone could fill a book, but my favourites include:
o Playing rugby outside the ferry terminal in Amsterdam. Lynn McIntyre had lost her passport and while we waited on her getting a replacement, Wilson Ross organised an impromptu game of rugby.
o The bus being unable to get back under the railway bridge near the hotel once it had unloaded.
o Almost being arrested for photographing a bank building in Luxembourg.
o Gary Laing, Walter Millar and Jimmy Williamson selling the band members soft toilet roll they bought in a local shop because the hotel toilet roll was slightly rough.
o Highland Dancing as well as playing with the band – this was to give the band a rest. I just about needed an oxygen mask by the end of it!
Some band members will remember that in my younger days I was a bit accident-prone. This was highlighted when I fell at the feet of a police officer whilst in the middle of Camelon Mariners' Day. I got quite a ribbing for the fact that the policeman nearly went right over the top of me! Another potential accident was had on our way to Queensferry Fair one year. I was travelling with George Beattie when we approached the Echline roundabout, which in those days didn’t have traffic lights. George became slightly disorientated and started to drive round the roundabout the wrong way, until we started yelling at him to go the right way! Although they have never caused us an accident, I now get slightly apprehensive if we don’t have an ambulance disrupt the parade at one of the Deacons' nights, as they always seem to make an appearance at some stage in the Marches proceedings.
In later years I have had the privilege of teaching some of our new learners. This has been challenging and entertaining. From young Paul, whose hands weren’t quite big enough to hold the clarinet, to Klaus, a more elderly gentleman who already played a number of instruments, but was keen to add the clarinet to his list, some fifteen players have attended lessons at one point or another. It gives me great pleasure to see some of them now enjoying playing with the ‘real’ band.
A lot of things have changed during my time with the band. When I started I was one of fewer than 10 females in the band, whereas now the gender balance is more equal. A number of characters have had to hang up their instruments due to illness or old age – Jimmy Hamilton, Jim Scotland, Wendy and Ronnie Blakey, Joe Kilgallon and Jim McKenna to name but a few. Happily, new characters have joined to help fill their boots. Music has come and gone from the March pad. We have even become a charity now.
Over the years the band has provided me with many things. It is much more to me than some place to go and practise music. Even now that I live 40 miles away in Fife, I would not consider giving up my weekly trips to the band. A lot of that has to do with the characters, both young and old, that make up the Reed Band and give it its friendly and welcoming approach. Long Live the Reed Band! I hope I will still be playing when the band celebrates its Centenary!
From Baroque to the back row
By Alisoun Morton
I came to LRB from a background of classical and baroque music. When Fred Frayling-Kelly asked me to play oboe on a trip to Germany in 1985, it was a revelation that playing music need not be deadly serious or high in aspiration.
I survived the culture shock of the concert/military band repertoire and relished the opportunity to play clarinet extensively with the band and to learn about a whole new musical activity, namely marching around. What an unnatural way of playing any instrument, with music wobbling on a lyre and embouchure endangered by every pothole, but there is surely more camaraderie in getting droukit and forfochen together than in sitting demurely in a classical music ensemble. There is also the fun of watching people change personality when they put on a uniform, like getting into the driving seat of a car.
The back of the band was a happy place to march. John Duncan was there on clarinet, with an unquenchable twinkle in his eye, always able to surround himself with girls and always in good humour, except when he once referred to the band treasurer as a ‘conniving b…..d’ (he later retracted the reference to parentage). There were strong players, well capable of competing with the cornet section, although harmony parts were regrettably thin on the ground because everybody enjoyed playing the melody altissimo.
The job I probably enjoyed most was the band’s performance of Handel’s Firework Music, with fireworks, on the occasion of the Burgh's 600th anniversary in 1989. There was a lovely oboe part in the arrangement and the clarinets got the dotted quaver/semiquaver rhythm right on the night.
My subsequent move into the male-dominated ‘heavy’ section to play trombone – and into the front row of the marching line-up – was indeed a test of love and loyalty to the band. But community bands are all about social education, shaking down young and old, deft and dysfunctional, grumpy and good-natured, into a working team. LRB is characterised by its lack of conformists, like the sextet that marched single-file, playing, from Bo’ness Academy to their cars one wet Fair Day or the cornet player who can always find a willing household to dispense liquid hospitality to the band. Then there are the players that keep the show on the road at all costs – Jimmy Hamilton, who saved the band from carrying odd bits of music by making up the ‘Tartan books’ with tartan-patterned cardboard from his workplace; Eddie McKenna, who turned out with the soprano saxophone when there were no cornets at Ratho and Newbridge Gala; and Alex Grant, who played through Bo’ness Fair non-stop when there were no other first cornet players there. There are also the younger members who have grown up with the band and stayed on, not necessarily for any accruing glory – folk like Calum and Gary Laing, Yvonne (née Bryan) and Martin Byrne, Walter Millar, Sharon Laird and Seonaid Anderson.
We are a great team and the equable command of Eddie McKenna has supported us all through many kittle situations over the years. The band is a wonderful place to make friends, although nobody is afraid to speak their mind openly.
What of the next 50 years for the ‘band birds’? Carolyn McSherry is now the longest-serving female, having joined in 1984. Lady committee members are on the increase and the only sections currently without any lassies are the percussion and tubas. One day there may be an all-female front row – how will the lads take to that? The band had a female secretary in the 1980s and now again has one. Wendy Blakey and myself struck a blow for feminism when we nominated ourselves for the Loving Cup at the second Deacons’ Parade in 1990. Jacqui Dignan waved the stick as assistant conductor in the 80s, but I wonder when the Reed Band will be ready for its first full-time lady conductor?
"Hail The Gallant"
By Walter Millar
Hail the Gallant Rosie Posie to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic has been the anthem of Linlithgow Rose supporters, since it was written by Andrew Hunter in 1964. The Reed Band has played it at important Scottish Cup ties at Prestonfield on a number of occasions, the most notable perhaps being the titanic clash in 1994 with great rivals Bo'ness United.
Since as far back as I can remember, my Dad would take me to Prestonfield to watch the Rose and cheer on legends like Leslie Donaldson, Big Mick Reynolds, Tommy Ure and my next door neighbour, Stewart Park. Parkie also played cornet with the Reed Band and his dad Willie was the treasurer and played the cymbals. So, you could say that, in my mind, the Rose and the Band have always had a connection.
After years of being reminded of the Rose's glorious 1965 Scottish Junior Cup victory by my Dad, Uncle Tommy and other members of the family, in 2002 it was the turn of the current generation to follow in their footsteps to what we hoped would be another famous Cup Final victory. The band hired a bus and we travelled west to the home of Partick Thistle, along with what seemed to be most of the town. Confidence was high and arrangements had already been made for the triumphant return to Linlithgow. Hail the Gallant had been rehearsed in the band hall the previous Tuesday and members had been informed of the time and place for the start of the homecoming parade. Sure enough, the Rose did not disappoint and a 1-0 victory over Auchinleck Talbot ensured we travelled back in jubilation.
The victory parade was due to start at the Bridge Inn and as the team bus rolled up with the Scottish Cup proudly displayed in the front window, the players transferred to an open-topped double decker. Incidentally, I had only ever witnessed this scene once before when, in 1984, under protest, I was made to go over the Flints by my Mum - a native Bo'nessian - to watch our near-neighbours come home in triumph after their Cup win. But now it was our turn! The weather, which had been dull and rainy for most of the day, suddenly brightened and as we left the Brig, the clouds had broken and the sun was shining through.
After a pre-match warm up of the tune, we marched eastwards. All along the way people joined the procession, just like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, until we finally reached the Cross, where thousands of townsfolk were waiting to catch a glimpse of the famous trophy, one of the oldest in world football. To me, it was reminiscent of the 5pm finale on Marches Day. And there was only one tune the crowd wanted to hear!
After a few bars of Hail the Gallant, the crowd started quietly singing "There's no' a team in Scotland that can beat the Lithgae Rose”. By the time we completed the tune for the first time, everyone along the route was singing and the song was ringing up and down the High Street. We played it over and over again down to the Low Port and back up to the Cross, where the team and the cup were safely installed at the Burgh Halls to be congratulated by Provost David Rae of the Deacons' Court.
I must admit that things started to get a bit hazy after this, as the band retired to celebrate a glorious day. They say that good things come in threes and in 2002, they did for me. The Rose winning the Cup, being part of the band on the victory parade, and marrying my wife Gail. Just like that TV advert, priceless!
A lifetime ambition fulfilled
By Christopher Mutch
Not many eight year olds can claim to have fulfilled their lifelong ambition, but when I joined the Linlithgow Reed Band, I could. Having been taught the clarinet by long serving band member, John Duncan, he persuaded me to join the junior section to improve my rhythm. For many years I was lucky enough to work with the junior band conductor Tommy Rumney, and to this day I attempt to apply the skills and knowledge he passed to me.
At the age of nine, I progressed to the main band, and throughout my musical career, I have never been as nervous as I was at my first rehearsal. With so many characters sitting around me, however, I soon learned that being part of the Reed Band was a positive learning experience in many ways. My musical ability was stretched and I quickly improved. My social skills were called upon and I had to learn to interact with many different people. For me, the Reed Band was and still is not just a musical part of Linlithgow, but an institution that fosters a community spirit through its music. It educates and it entertains, and through its music, it provides opportunities for the town's people.
I studied music at the University of Glasgow and gained a Bachelor of Music degree with honours. I am now training to be a music teacher at Strathclyde University. As I teach young people, I can only hope that they are provided with an opportunity to work with a similar organisation. The commitment to my musical education from the conductor Joe Lavery was obvious from day one, with him forever looking to improve my playing and musicality. With his continued support, and the presence of an enthusiastic ensemble, I am sure that without the Reed Band, I would not be a musician today. I have many happy memories from my last 15 years in the band, and look forward to many more years of continued enjoyment. I would encourage any young musicians to join the band as it provides a platform for many musical experiences that are unique, educational, and most importantly, fun.
