NYBBS to feature in livestreamed Spectra and Stars concert on Sunday evening

Current members and recent alumni of the National Youth Brass Band of Scotland will be taking centre stage with fellow brass musicians from local Fife bands and the world-renowned Wallace Collection in a concert extravaganza entitled Spectra and Stars on Sunday evening.

The event will bring together all the participants of the award-winning StAMP (St Andrews Music Participation) project based in Fife and Clackmannanshire that launched during the pandemic at the end of a brass weekend to be held on 24-26 September.

StAMP is a major brass outreach project run by the Laidlaw Music Centre in partnership with the Wallace Collection. During the pandemic the project reached literally hundreds of brass players internationally and started 150 children learning brass, more than 70 of whom have gone on to join their local brass band.

The band assembled for the concert will inspire the children with a performance of Scottish composer Eddie McGuire’s Earthrise. Completing the programme will be arrangements of music by the Scottish classical composer Thomas Erskine, and a specially narrated performance of Gilbert Vinter’s classic Spectrum: its movements of colour will be explored in relation to how astronomers use colour to understand the stars, planets and galaxies.

The concert – an interdisciplinary exploration of music and astronomy as part of the long running art, music and astronomy project called Shine – will be livestreamed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/MusicfromStAndrews from 5pm on Sunday evening (26 September).

Over the course of the coming year StAMP will again start more than 100 children on their musical journey by delivering their pioneering Discovering Brass programme which uses the natural trumpet as a starting point for learning all brass instruments, and as a tool for interdisciplinary exploration.