Par CURNOW JAMES. What a wonderful idea! Make beautiful music such as this available at the Grade 1 level! Even young bands love to play enchantingly beautiful melodies. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort in helping your students learn to play full value notes, breathe in appropriate places, and stretch out their phrases so that they sound more mature and less like beginners. In the Bleak Mid-Winter by Holst is a perfect opportunity for them to truly realise the value of these things you’ve been teaching. Your musicians will come away from the experience of preparing this piece with a better understanding of how to shape a melodic phrase and play with warm, reserved elegance. / Niveau : 1 / Répertoire / Concert Band ou Harmonie

Par VAN DER ROOST JAN. This major concert work cosists o five movements. 1st movement: La Laguna del ShimbeSituated high up in the Andes mountains in Northern Peru are the Huaringas, a group of lagoons in isolated and mysterious surroundings. The water has healing powersand for centuries traditional healers have settled there in small villages. From far the sick come to the Huaringas to be treated in nightly rituals, in which the hallucinating juice of the San Pedro cactus gives the prophet a look inside hispatient. The biggest lagoon is the “Laguna del Shimbe”, one of the countless wells of the immense Amazon stream. 2nd movement: Los AguarunasFurther downstream in Northern Peru we come across the rain tribe of Los Aguarunas. It’s a proud, beautiful andindependent race, which has never succumbed to domination, not even from the Incas. They live from everything the forest has to offer: fish, fruit, plants, . . . . They also grow some crops and live as semi-nomads. They take their fate into their ownhands and after having made contact with modern civilisation, they have integrated new elements into their lives without betraying their own ways. 3rd movement: MekaronMekaron is an Indian word meaning “picture”, “soul”, “essence”. The Indians are theorigina inhabitants of the Amazon region. They either live in one place as a group or move around a large region. They all have their own political system, their own language and an intense social life. At the same time they are master of music andmedicine. “Everywhere the white man goes, he leaves a wilderness behind him”, wrote the North American Indian leader Seatl in 1885. As a result of these contacts with the whites, the disruption of most Indian societies began. (In this century alone, 80 tribes have vanished completely). 4th movement: KêêtuajêThis is the name of the initiating ceremony of the Krahô tribe in the Brazilian state of Goias, in which young boys and girls enter adult life. They are cleansed with water, painted with redpaint and covered with feathers, after which the ritual dance holds the entire tribe spell-bound. 5th movement: Paulino FaiakanIn 1988 the Indian chiefs Faiakan and Raoni Kaiapo came to Europe to protest against the building of the Altamira dam inBrazil. As a result of the dam the Indians would be driven from their traditional land and enormous artificial would be created. The project was supported financially by, amongst others, the European Community. In February 1989 the Indian tribesaround Altamira held a protest march for the first time in their history together. Amongst other things they paid tribute tot Chico Mendez, who, murdered in 1988, was the leader of the rubber syndicate and a fierce opponent of the destruction of theBrazilian rain forest. Brazilian and world opinion was awakened. The building of the dam was -albeit temporarily - stopped. / Niveau : 6 / Pièce de concert / Répertoire / Concert Band ou Harmonie

Par CURNOW JAMES. What a wonderful idea! Make beautiful music such as this available at the Grade 1 level! Even young bands love to play enchantingly beautiful melodies. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort in helping your students learn to play full value notes, breathe in appropriate places, and stretch out their phrases so that they sound more mature and less like beginners. In the Bleak Mid-Winter by Holst is a perfect opportunity for them to truly realise the value of these things you’ve been teaching. Your musicians will come away from the experience of preparing this piece with a better understanding of how to shape a melodic phrase and play with warm, reserved elegance. / Niveau : 1 / Répertoire / Concert Band