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If you are a music maker or a small music venue (a church for example) within a bus journey from Stockport, and would like your music listed below, please let me know. For the present this offer is limited to instrumental music- from solo to orchestral, with no vocals and no heavy drums.
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Date order summary of music in the next week or so... in the Stockport and Manchester area.
The Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust Stockport Wurlitzer at the Town Hall - one of the largest in Europe, built for Paramount. The only "Publix" model outside America. Monthly Monday lunchtime concerts and a handful of Sunday afternoon concerts, check their website for details.
Nearby, Manchester also still has once fine but now sadly needing restoration Cavaille-Coll Organ which few locals know about.
Stockport Symphony Orchestra play at Stockport Town Hall, usually eight concerts per year, very good music, and the concerts are often fully attended. As the seats are not reserved, you need to be there early - 7.15pm may be too late to get a seat for popular concerts. If you didn't like a big name orchestra, come and try this one, their talent and skill is outstanding.
Stockport Brass (formerly BT Band, formerly POEU Band) - alas the loss of sponsorship at last led to the demise of this historic band in early 2009.
We are very fond of brass band music, and after some heavy immersion have decided we really prefer the bands in the fourth section to the Championship bands, who are too loud for us and have some prima donna ways. But catching a section four band is difficult as they tend to play rarely and in small venues. A good place to catch a lot of them is a brass band contest such as the Spring contests in Dukinfield Town Hall or at Buxton Pavilion. Buxton has a bandstand in the Gardens by the pavilion, with regular 2pm-4pm Sunday brass concerts, subject to last minute cancelation but they're free.
Other brass band music to be found from Vernon (Formerly Poynton) Brass Band and Poynton Youth Brass Band
Brass Band news is available from 4 Bars Rest |
IBEW directory of UK brass bands. IBEW UK Brass Band Latest CDs list. Warning: There are a lot of out of date brass band web sites out there, and some brass bands choose to make it impossible for you to buy any CDs that they make, so use all links from IBEW with consideration. Send an email or letter enquiry to the band before sending money for CDs.There is also a Comprehensive CD list from IBEW which inevitably has many broken links and long unavailable CDs, but well worth a look - if you don't ask you don't know!
Brass Band contest results excludes Whit Friday results from Tameside and Saddleworth.
Stockport has a small but active steel drum band the Stockport Pantonic All Stars.
St Peters Church on St Petersgate, Stockport, generally has a lunchtime concert on the first Wednesday of each month at 12.30, free admission. They also serve lunches Tues-Fri from 11am to 2pm - soup and a roll, or a baked potato or a salad etc.
In central Manchester there are regular Tuesday lunchtime organ recitals at St Anns Church (1pm, except August and December). St Anns Church also has the odd Wednesday lunchtime recital from pupils of the RNCM and occaisonal Saturday afternoon piano recitals. There is also a season of Tuesday evening concerts at St Anns from a music society at 7.30pm - next I have note of is on 17th August 2010 (Baroque).
Chethams School of Music near to Manchester Cathedral has regular daily lunch time recitals by its pupils at 1.35pm, in term time only, so not in July or August. Check on 0161 834 9644 to see if there is a concert on a particular day.
Milapfest produce Saturday afternoon (2 pm) concerts of Indian music at the Bridgewater Hall, tickets eight pounds, booking office 0161 907 9000. The next concerts are: 24th July 2010 Sarod and bamboo flute.
A Little Bite Music (The Bridgewater Hall Community Education Trust) presents free lunchtime concerts at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall on many Fridays at 12.30, details on their web site. These concerts can sometimes suffer from over enthusiastic amplification or restless noisy audiences sometimes, but you can walk out and have paid nothing. Why not visit the art gallery or the museum instead!
Concerts held at Stockport Town Hall on one page. Not always accurate- sometimes list concerts that don't happen or get the times wrong (not always the right days either...) best to ring them before travelling, as recommended on the web page
To download old radio (OTR) MP3s, visit RadioLovers.com - with so many OTR sites now only offering paid for services or streams, it is nice to report that Internet Archive OTR has a growing collection, of often superior quality MP3s.
An interesting and nicely coded OTR website is OTRCAT.com, who get a mention for the cat, also for the very large collection of mostly US old time radio programmes, together with some info on each programme. With so many programmes on offer, the principal source of supply is CD (audio or MP3) which also pays for the bandwidth, but there is also a sample of each show available to download, plus an interesting "on this day" feature with shows from today's date from previous decades. Unlike some OTR sites you are not forced to the dubious charms of Paypal but can use the arguably safer medium of cash (or even credit card). (To avoid any misunderstanding- no link on my website is sponsored or paid for in any way - OTRCAT offers an affiliate program which I do not participate in. Their link is here on merit.)
Another source of free OTR downloads is Tennessee Bills Old Time Radio Libary. Huge number of radio shows plus old cylinders and records.
A useful source of UK radio feeds is Radiofeeds. If your browser does not support the protocols, links to rtsp addresses can be pasted into Realplayer whilst addresses in the form mms can be pasted into Mediaplayer. Addresses of the form http://43.43.43.43/radioname require the very latest Windows Media Player.