Silver band aid for Rosemary Appeal
EWSB play marches and musicals in push to reach £4.5m target
EACH year East Woodhay Silver Band performs a fund-raising concert in aid of a local charity or fund, as part of their services to the communities of West Berkshire and North West Hampshire.
In aid of The Rosemary Appeal, this year’s concert and a raffle will be held at the Catholic Church Hall, Thatcham, on Friday, November 3.
The band will be supported by local wordsmith and open mic performer Ken Rich, who will be giving his observations as the evening progresses. The first half will open with the march The New Colonial by American composer RB Hall, setting the scene for jazz and song extracts from well-known US musicals, including 42nd Street and West Side Story, with a brief foray into Germany for Hermann Koenig ’s Post Horn Gallop from soloist Alan Powell.
The second half will start with Zehle’s 1912 march Wellington, to move the focus back to Europe, and includes a singalong selection of Songs of the Forties. Given the proximity to Remembrance Day, the concert will end with Ken Rich reciting McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields, with the band playing Gavin Somerset’s music of the same title.
Tickets, priced £10 to include an interval drink, are available in advance from Hogan’s Music, Newbury, Henwick Properties, Thatcham, Katy Hawthorne (01635 34045, kfh7@hotmail.com) or at the door.
The Rosemary Appeal is raising £4.5m for a new wing at West Berkshire Community Hospital, providing much-needed facilities for the local community. The new building will have a renal dialysis unit with 10 stations on the ground floor and a cancer care unit on the first floor, providing chemotherapy, improved day care facilities and treatments, specialised nurses and counselling. The wing, already under construction, is planned to open in late spring of 2018. With promised money, the appeal is just over the £3m mark – two thirds of the way to the target. The building is going well with all the block work finished, fit-out starts in Nov/Dec and will take four months to do.
