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INTERNATIONAL CONCERTINA ASSOCIATION Membership Secretary Events Secretary Martin Williams, Marian Janes 3 Frinton House 15 Crescent Road Rushcroft Road London N8 SAL London SW2 01 348 5563 01 737 7987 President Rev Kenneth Loveless VRD FSA FSA Scot Hon RNR Treasurer Editor John Entract Alan Dyer 16 Mandeville Rd 29 Horton Avenue Saffron Watden Thame Essex Oxon ************************************************************************************************ No 341 Nov/Dec '86 A Christmass Message from the President On the 29th November the following appeared in "The Times" under the heading "Busking Out": 'American actor, Stephen Hanan, presently starring in "Les Miserables" recently received a standing ovation in Covent Garden - because his audience had no seats. Hanan was entertaining a West End street audience with a selection of Italian arias, accomanying himself on a concertina. He tells me he did it for fun and was quite pleased to nip back into the Palace Theatre for a matinee show £15 richer." Truly the wheel has come almost full circle, and our instrument is rapidly attaining to the popularity it received in Victorian times. I am delighted with the way in which our association is forging ahead. We have an excellent newsletter and are developing regionally - something which 1 have long been advocating. When I joined some thirty years ago there were no Anglo concertinas, excepting mine! Now, they flourish, as does folk music - and so our membership increases. It is a very healthy situation and long may it continue and improve. We have, alas, lost two of our most stalwart supporters during the year - Tom Jukes and Tom Prince, may their souls rest in peace. They gave us much that we shall remember. I have written these things because it is right that, at the turn of the year, we should take stock. Christmass is almost upon us - and queuing up is now an inevitable part of the festive season, as shoppers all over the country throng into our towns and cities in search of food, drink and those ever-elusive Christmass presents. In Britain the queues are for turkeys and tinsel, mince pies and marzipan, Christmass treats and executive toys. In Africa, starving people queue for maize and milk-powder - and for another bite at life. In Britain, Christmass shopping can seem like a scrum which only the fittest survive. In Africa it's only the fittest who make it to the relief queues in the first place. Despite the gains of short-term relief aid and longer-term development work, and the startling success of national fund raising efforts, like Sport- Aid, three million people are still starving in Sudan alone. As in countries throughout Africa, the factors of poverty have taken their crippling toll over the year. 1 I ask you all, during your Christmass festivities, to remember these things and to continue to help financially, according to your moans, as I am sure you have done during the past year. Your own happiness will be the more complete when you know you have done what you could for others - for that is what the festival is about - goodwill to all men. And so, as Tiny Tim observed in Charles Dickens' immortal "Christmas Carol" - "God bless us - every one". Fr. Kenneth Loveless. MEMBERSHIP MATTERS New Members R.K.Henrywood Richard Harrison 12 Pollards Fields Greenways Ferrybridge Miss Leonie Install LTCL School Lyne 10 Park Place W.Yorks Broughton WF11 8TD Wembley Stockbridge Middlesex Hants HA9 8DB S020 8BZ Steve Goodyear 16 Woodlands Road Worcester Address Changes Chris and Judy Whiting Alan L Goodman now 93 Irving Road now 1 Eagles' Circle Southbourne Chadds Ford Bournemouth PA 19317 BH6 5BH USA Jenny Cox S.K.Simpson now 26 Hill Grove now Skarpskyttevagen 20c Henleaze S- 222 42 Lund Bristol Sweden BS9 4RJ Subscriptions Received with thanks R A McLeod, D GLover, C M Strachan, P E Morley, P C Taylor, J Fiacre, A Bardiaux, J D Finlay, J Beckett, L Laieski, C Corradi, A.L Goodman, T Helenburgh, D J Hall C A Sawbridge. J Bibby-Cox, B Goodyear, D H Murray. Subscriptions Due November 1986 M Howson, G J Coyne, S Eydmann, A Maclean, P Wallace, F R Gomm, H F Cheers, Subscriptions Due December 1986 W L Rawson, B Leach, W Blakeman, E Jevons. 2 AGM AGM AGM 21st February, 1987 The Annual General Meeting of the International Concertana Association will be held at 2.30pm at Bloomsbury Community Hail, St. George's Churchyard, Bloomsbury Way, London WC1. I.C.A. Festival 9th May 1987 To be held in Victoria Methodist Hall, Westmorland Terrace, London SWl. Full details of classes, test pieces etc. will be published in the January Newsletter. From Brian Bibby DAVE TOWNSEND'S ENGLISH CONCERTINA WORKSHOP This workshop was held in the hall of the Drama Department of the Henry Box School in Witney. Well, eventually it was. It took us half an hour to find the caretaker, but fortunately the weather was warm and sunny, and we finished half an hour later in the evening to make up. Dave circulated the music for the workshop about a fortnight prior. There was a fair variety of it, ranging from Elgar's Nimrod (arranged by Frank Butler) to a syncopated American version of Soldier's Joy that bore almost no relation to the tune we all know and hate. The music was arranged in from three to five parts of varying (marked) difficulty. Some parts were in the bass clef which I transcribed into treble clef beforehand for playing on a baritone. In general I found the music fairly hard to read, perhaps because I was not usually reading the melody line. There was one folk piece in each key from F to D, but the Mozart "Contretanz" was in B flat, which I think most people had a little trouble with, and the Nimrod was in E flat, which would have been beyond me if the piece had not been so slow. Difficult, but not im­ possible, and probably to be expected at a workshop which is not after all just a play-around. Over lunch Dave took each player aside for five or so minutes for individual comments on their style and faults. Even so short a time was of use to many, leaving them to rectify matters on their own. (For those requiring it, Dave does give private lessons.) So, while the rest of us relaxed in the pub, Dave was working. The tea and biscuits in the morning and afternoon added to the socia­ bility and provided a needed break. Certainly, I resolve to practise the music more before the next meeting, but I think all fourteen of us thought the day very worth while. 3 From John Beckett, now residing in Southampton, who writes: I am spurred on to write to you as a result of the ICA October 86 Newsletter, in particular Martin Williams's query about concertinas in N. Ireland. I lived there for forty years until about ten years ago, and can state that, up to then, there was little or no concertina playing. There are certainly no Orange Bands playing concertinas. The principal instruments are either piano accordions, two-row C/C# button-keyed accordions, or, more likely, flute bands. I picked up a secondhand concertina in Belfast in the late 1960s, but it was not till ten or more years later that I discovered it was a Lachenal "Duet" and that there was also an "English" keyboard. I played a cheap anglo in a folk group in the early 1960s, gaduating from a C/C# accordion. In all the years concertina playing (around twelve) I only ever met another local player. He was Robin Morton, who joined "Boys of the Lough" later on. To sum up, there is not any concertina playing indigenous to N. Ireland. I believe there is an "anglo" tradition in the West of Ireland, but have not actually experienced it. Some Liverpool friends did mention that there are concertina Orange Bands on Merseyside, but again I have never seen any. Even now duet players are a rarity, yet the instrument seems more versatile than the "English". Does anyone agree? Apartado 48 Alfoz del Pi Alicante, Spain Re requests for contributions to concertina music, many names have been mentioned in the Newsletter. But as a boy, which was a long time ago, there was one man playing on the halls who was considered to be a "wizard", but I have never seen his name mentioned. It was Percy Honri. Some of our older members must remember him, and I would be very interested to read something about his playing and the sort of music he played, as he was before my time and I only know what other people have told me. But they all "raved". Vic Davies See "Working the Halls" by Peter Honri Suggestions for a name for a classical group might include 'The Regondi....' (Giulio Regondi 1822 - 1872 - pioneer concertina player). But I believe you are thinking of a less formal group. John Entract, Saffron Walden 4 Concertina Day at the Taunton and Somerset Music and Drama Festival 15th November 1986 1. Formal Report - Who played and who won what section This part of the Festival was held in the music room at Queen's College, Taunton, an imposing but not too intimidating background for competitors to provide us with a feast of concertina music. Dave Townsend again proved an extremely able and sympathetic adjudicator, from the moment he ensured a bit of peace from latecomers for the first nervous entrant in the Elementary class, to the last choice between five very different bands in the last section.

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