In support of the StAMP music education project and to supplement the StAMP Brass Camp music-making activities, an online StAMP Fringe Festival was also made available to the general public. The series of online events involved performances and presentations from a collection of internationally renowned figures from the world of brass.
Ian Bousfield: Cavatine by Saint-Saëns
First Premiered on Tuesday 14 July, 1400BST
Ian Bousfield, former Principal Trombone of the Vienna Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestras, offers a guided practice session on the Cavatine by Camille Saint-Saëns. Ian discussed how this piece would have originally sounded by comparing a pair of Parisian instruments, both dating from 1880: a valve trombone, and a slide trombone.
The Celebrated Cyfarthfa Band
Screened on Wednesday 15 July, 1400BST
The BBC/OpenLearn documentary The Celebrated Cyfarthfa Band was part of a 1980s research project led by Trevor Herbert, one of our camp experts. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Merthyr Tydfil was the world’s greatest supplier of iron and the largest town in Wales. It was dominated by Cyfarthfa Castle, the ostentatious home of the greatest of the iron barons, Robert Thompson Crawshay. In the mid-nineteenth century, Crawshay established a brass band that was to become one of the greatest musical ensembles of the Victorian period. The documentary includes commentary by John Wallace who was directly involved in a recreation of the band for the research project. It also features Tony George, member of The Wallace Collection and StAMP Brass Camp tutor.
Arnold Myers: How Brass Instruments Work
First Premiered on Tuesday 21 July, 1400BST
A fascinating presentation and discussion led by Arnold Myers on how brass instruments work, followed by a panel discussion with a collection of seasoned brass instrument experts. Arnold knows this subject like no other, having worked with Trevor Herbert and John Wallace on the recently published Cambridge Encyclopedia of Brass Instruments.
Screening of We Choose To Go To The Moon
First Premiered on Wednesday 22 July, 1400BST
Beginning life as a temporary art intervention in the desert of southern New Mexico, “We choose to go to the Moon” takes its cue from the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 12 Moon landings in 1969. Prior to the launch in November 1969, the Apollo 12 crew were sent on a training mission to a large crater in the New Mexico desert known as Kilbourne Hole. Exactly 50 years later Kilbourne Hall would provide the location of the art intervention. From the documentary film footage of the public art event, artists Tim Fitzpatrick and Jeff Erwin began to envisage Apollo 12 as a road movie: the audience as the crew, the bus as the rocket and the bus driver as the mission commander! Commissioned by the Las Cruces Space Festival in 2019, the resulting 16-minute film is brought to life by an original soundtrack composed by Andrew Knight-Hill in collaboration with trumpeter Bede Williams, member of The Wallace Collection.
Grand Finale Concert
First Premiered on Wednesday 29 July, 1300BST
StAMP Brass Camp 2020 came to an end in style! The culmination of three weeks of online brass activities is presented through a Grand Finale Concert. It involved participants from all over the world and around 80 beginner trumpeters in Fife, Clackmannanshire, Tayside and Perth & Kinross, as well as The Wallace Collection, Solstice Brass, tuba virtuoso James Gourlay in Pittsburgh, world-leading trombonist Ian Bousfield in Bern, and new music magicians Marco Blaauw and Christine Chapman in Cologne!
The full concert programme is also detailed in our news post about the event.