'Hollywood' band to host workshop

A band whose work has featured in soundtracks of films starring Hollywood actors Colin Firth and Catherine Zeta Jones is holding a musical workshop in Kerry next month.

The renowned Mellstock Band will lead an afternoon workshop open to singers and instrumentalists of all abilities at Kerry Church and an evening concert at Kerry Church. Their music has been featured in the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, and the film The Return of the Native, starring Catherine Zeta Jones.

The events form part of the outreach programme of Gregynog Festival which is the oldest festival in Wales.

Each Festival takes a different theme as the starting point for its curation and the 2013 programme, Great Britten, honours the centenary of the composer's birth and his appearance at Gregynog in 1972 with the tenor Peter Pears and the harpist Osian Ellis.

The festival season, 20-30 June, brings together some of the finest artists in the world to perform seven centuries of Great British music. Britten's work is well represented and concerts also highlight some of the creative minds who were influential upon his scores such as the composers Henry Purcell and John Dowland and the poet, novelist and musician Thomas Hardy.

Mellstock was the fictional name which Hardy gave to his native village of Higher Bockhampton in Dorset and his family were leading local musicians who led the church band and played for dances. Hardy’s vivid descriptions, the players’ own manuscript books, and music from local tradition were the initial inspiration for the formation of The Mellstock Band in 1986.

Playing authentic instruments of the 1840s, the band under its director Dave Townsend re-creates the musical culture described and documented by Hardy, using manuscript sources of traditional songs, choral music, and instrumental tunes and arrangements.

“This is music for everyone,” explains Dave Townsend. “It’s straightforward enough for people new to singing choral music, but with twists and turns to surprise the most experienced singers. It’s full of vitality, with glorious harmonies and counterpoint that is great fun to sing and play.”

The band entertain with a unique combination of singing, instrumental music and spoken word, encompassing west gallery harmony, traditional songs, glees, dances, marches, poems and stories. This is the genuine sound of English traditional folk music - merry and majestic tunes, songs of love and laughter, carols and original harmonies – and their recordings have become standard works of reference for traditional music and song of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

West gallery music-making survived in Mid Wales and Shropshire as well as Dorset and according to Gregynog Festival's Artistic Director, Rhian Davies, the events at Kerry will highlight these connections.

“There is evidence of the tradition at several locations within Gregynog Festival's catchment, including churches in Dyffryn Banw, Montgomery and Kerry on the Powys side of the Border as well as Mainstone and Bishop's Castle in Shropshire.

"A bassoon in Montgomery's Old Bell Museum, for instance, is clearly a relic from these times. I have also transcribed some music from A Shropshire Harmony, a manuscript at Shropshire Archives in the hand of Thomas Owens of Bishop's Castle, and we are planning to revive some of this during the day.”

For tickets and further information, please visit the Gregynog Festival website www.gregynogfestival.org where you can book online or telephone 01686 207100.

For the full programme, please see over or visit www.gregynogfestival.org.