This is a 90 minute recording of the East Ayrshire Schools Brass Band and Choir Concert back in 2000. It was filmed at the Grand Hall in Kilmarnock.
Welcome to the third annual concert to be given by the East Ayrshire Schools’ Brass Band and East Ayrshire Schools’ choir. The varied programme spans 300 years from the 18th to the 21st century.
Following a successful application in 1999 by East Ayrshire Council’s Department of Education to the Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund, the internationally renowned composer Goff Richards was commissioned to write a work for the band and choir which would in some way reflect East Ayrshire.
Robert Burns’ First Edition was published in Kilmarnock in 1976 by John Wilson and it seemed wholly appropriate to use extracts from Burns poetry as the text for the piece, ‘A String O’ Blethers’ by Goff Richards, who passed away on 25 June 2011 in Cheshire, following an illness, at the age of 66.