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Penny and Christina use digitized newspapers to research their guest's family or personal history. The newspapers are hosted in Trove, the National Library of Australia's online research portal.
(Jaunty piano music bass part)
00:10 Penny: This podcast was recorded at the Richmond Library on unceded, stolen Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.
00:21 (Jaunty piano music treble part)
00:30 Penny: Welcome to In Those Days a podcast where we talk about yesterday’s news today. My name's Penny Tangey and my co-host is Christina Adams. We use the Nation Library of Australia's digitized newspapers in Trove to explore the personal histories of a guest.
We recorded this episode in the Richmond Library Makerspace as part of their artist in residence program. So thanks to Yarra Council and particularly the staff of Richmond Library for their help.
Now our guest on this episode is Adam Arnold and we're gonna be talking to him about brass bands in Richmond, past and present. We find some uncanny parallels between the Richmond Boys Brass Band, which started in 1917 and the brass bands Adam started almost a hundred years later.
At the end of the episode we have a special guest. Her name is Scarlett O’Heeler and she's going to give us the perspective of a current Richmond brass player.
01:26 (Jaunty piano music soprano part)
01:35 Penny: We're very lucky. We've got Adam Arnold here today, who is a musician, a music teacher, a composer. Is that all correct?
Adam: Yeah. That's all that's all a thing. Yeah.
Christina: All of the things.
Penny: Excellent.
Adam: It's a it's a it's a broad it's a broad palette of things that I end up doing. Yeah.
Penny: But a lot of it's musical. And he started a brass band program at Richmond West Primary School.
Adam: Correct.
Penny: That's why we've got him in today. We're gonna be talking about brass bands in Richmond past and present.
Christina: Amazing.
Penny: And we're gonna be looking up some articles in Trove about that. And my first question to all guests is always, do you use Trove much, or have you used Trove?
Adam: I have probably inadvertently strolled across it amongst some - I did do a little bit of historical research when I was looking, to start the band, program in Richmond because I know brass bands have a strong history in Australia going back a 150 odd years. With a view to to hoping to get some support from council.
Penny: Yes.
Adam: Using a bit of a historical perspective to help, I guess, guide its its value to the community beyond just simply a music program.
Penny: Yeah. And that's that's very clever, I think.
Adam: I'll say it's it's yet to yield significant results.
Penny: Really?
Adam: Yeah. So sadly.
Christina: But, Keep plugging away.
Adam: I will.
Penny: Because brass bands were such an important part of the community, and they kind of represented the community. Like, you having the community having a good brass band, they were really proud of them.
Adam: To give it the historical perspective, I guess, you have to think of when recorded music was a thing. So if you go back, I mean, gramophones well, the first recordings were sort of late 1890s on wax cylinders, but your average punter didn't have access to that, and then you think gramophones, what, 1920s maybe, that average people could hear music on request. So amplified music, you know, guitars, electrified guitars weren't a thing till the 1940s. So for much of Australia's history, I guess, brief mental calculation, the majority of Australia's history, we haven't had that. It's only been you know, the last, you know, 100 years that we've had recorded music. So
Penny: And yet people still liked music.
Adam: Yeah. Well, that's you know, you had your pianos in households. I've got my my great grandmother's piano from around that time in my living room. You know, you'd have a family sing along or, you know, small concerts and things. But if you had any sort of community event, parades, festivals, funerals, weddings, any sort of outdoor event, the only way you could have music was to have something that could carry the sound outside, something that was portable. You couldn't bring the organ from the church outside.
That was pretty fixed where it was. So you had your brass band. And so so from the from the advent of those instruments in the 1830s, it just sprung up all around, you know, started in in Europe and the UK and and spread here very quickly. I think I'd have to look up Trove to find to find exactly this, but, the the oldest band in Australia, I believe, has, had its 150th a few years ago. Yeah.
Penny: Yeah. So it is a really long tradition. And how long have you lived in Yarra, Richmond?
Adam: I grew up in the eastern suburbs, Balwyn.
Christina: Oh, I was in North Balwyn.
Adam: North Balwyn.
Christina: Yeah. There it is.
Adam: Neighbours. There we go. Yeah. No. Well, look, very happy childhood around there. Moved to Sydney for a couple of years. I was in the Royal Australian Navy Band.
So I moved up there for work, after
Penny: So you weren't in the navy, though?
Adam: I was. Yes. I was
Penny: You were in the navy. You have to be in the navy to be in the band. That makes sense.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Leading Seaman Arnold.
Penny: Oh my god. So did you wanna be in the navy first, or did you wanna be in the band?
Adam: I wanted to play tuba for a job. There's not many places you can do that, for for a full salary. There's a handful of orchestras, and those jobs come up very, very rarely. There's a couple that just come up recently, actually, but, they
Penny: You going for it?
Adam: No. No. I'm too busy with what I'm doing now to to put in the practice time I'd need. But, I mean, those jobs come up once every 25 years in the in the big orchestras.
Penny: You gotta kill someone.
Adam: Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much. So, yeah. So I took a full time job with the with the Navy, and I'm probably jumping a few steps here. But, and then when I moved back, moved back to Melbourne for a posting again with the navy band that's based down at Hastings down
Christina: Cerberus.
Adam: HMAS Cerberus. Yeah.
Christina: That's where I live now. Like, not in Hastings, but not far from there.
Adam: Down that direction. Yeah. No. I was I was based down at Cerberus for a couple of years, but my wife was working very, very long hours in the city, and we wanted a place that would minimise the amount of time spent travelling. So, if we'd lived down Hastings way
Penny: That's a big commute.
Adam: That's a big commute for her to come in, and she was working 55 plus hour weeks
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: Doing business stuff. So it made more sense for me to live at the top of the Monash
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: Commute down to work for an hour drive for a 7:30 AM start every day. There were a couple of us living in the city, so we could carpool. So Richmond was the logical place. So, we started renting there in 2010.
Penny: That's very similar to when I moved.
Adam: Yeah.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: We bought there about 2 or 3 years later.
Penny: Then you started this brass band program at Richmond West, and this year, I went too long to see perform a concert at Collingwood Town Hall. And, look, to be honest, it was just not what I was expecting at all. It was really, really good. It was so entertaining, and, like, I knew the bands were good, and I'd sort of seen them develop from watching them at the school a few times and stuff, but it was like a real show. And from the very first song, they did this cool thing (I don't know if your meant to call it a song. It's a piece, a song, whatever. It was great.) And so the rookie band who are just the real beginners, and so they're on stage and they're playing it. And then for the last few hours of all of a sudden there was this huge noise, and you look up, and the older kids are all sitting on the balcony, and they all joined in for the last.
Christina: Nice.
Penny: And it was just like, wow, we're here.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: For those playing at home, that was, Richard Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Penny: No. It was
Adam: Known known as the the 2001 Space Odyssey music.
Christina: Oh yeah.
Penny: So you can imagine.
Christina: I can picture it now?
Penny: It was really, really cool. And so it was really it was a genuinely entertaining and uplifting show. And you mentioned the Richmond Boys Band Boys Brass Band when you were introducing one of the pieces. And of course, I'm in the audience thinking I'm gonna look them up in Trove when I get on home.
Adam: Yep.
Penny: And I did, and then I found out that there were quite a few articles about them. That band started in 1917. When did you start the program at Richmond West?
Adam: That would have been 2019.
Penny: Yeah. So it's almost exactly a 100 years. I think we'll call it a 100 years.
Adam: Yeah. I'm happy with it.
Penny: I thought it was really interesting to compare.
Christina: Yeah. Absolutely
Penny: The two bands one hundred years apart. The person who started the Richmond Boys Brass Band was called John T Dyamond.
Penny: So in 1953, there was kind of like a retrospective article about his career, which I thought we'd sort of read, and then we can sort of ask Adam how much.
Christina: Sounds good.
Penny: This is from the Bairnsdale Advertiser in East Gippsland's Stock and Station Journal.
Christina: Oh, good.
08:42 Penny: One of our favorites. I don't think it's still going, which is a real shame.
"50 years since Led First Band still retains enthusiasm of youth. A band master who has lost none of his enthusiasm for band organization since he first showed his ability as a leader in 1903 and one who has made a very valuable contribution to band efficiency in Victoria is mister Jack Dyamond, band master of the Prahran City Band."
We have found when we read these articles that, the sentences are very long with a lot of commas.
Christina: They're very verbose.
Penny: Yeah.
"Mister Diamond, who spent his youth in Bairnsdale, was back in his hometown for the recent band contest conducted by the Central Gippsland Band Group as an official of the Victorian Band League. Mister Diamond commenced his career as a bandsman in Bairnsdale. Like his brothers, Arthur, Jim, and Harry, he possessed a natural talent for playing band instruments."
Now, I actually looked it up, and I in a different article, I think he actually had 6 brothers who were once playing in a band together.
Christina: Almost a band on their own.
Penny: They were a band, pretty much by themselves. So they were very musical family. Did you grow up in a musical family?
Adam: I did. My my father is a music educator. Well, he was he was a primary school teacher for a long time, but as a sort of a side thing, he he ran the music program as well. He'd run musicals and conduct an orchestra and a choir. He then moved into focusing on music teaching, and he retired just last year. But he ran the the the school band program, something he'd done since he started teaching in the late seventies in at Doncaster Primary. Where, actually, we mentioned orchestral tuba players retiring. Tim Jones, who's just retiring from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, started in my dad's primary school
Christina: Oh. Oh, wow.
Adam: Doncaster Primary in the 1970s.
Christina: That's great.
Penny: Have you always been compared to him? Have you always felt that you needed to live up to his
Adam: I do have a photo of me as about a 2 year old playing, you know, bending down and trying to make a sound out of Tim's tuba when he was at the late primary school, or it must have been maybe early high school.
Penny: You have to start them young.
Adam: Yeah. Well, that's something that's that's gone on to my daughter who's playing tuba. So so my my dad had the school band, and, you know, sometimes, I guess, it's difficult to get people to play tuba.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: I was very willing, whether that was something that was that was sort of I was steered in. I think I always liked standing out a little bit, so I never wanted to be one of 15 trumpet players or
Christina: Yeah. Yeah.
Adam: Or 27th flute or anything like that. I always wanted to be the one with a special job.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: And and tuba seemed seemed that. So so that's definitely where I started.
My brother, he was the sport one in the family, more so than me, but he he still played he played oboe.
Christina: Okay.
Adam: Another hard to recruit instrument.
Christina: Yeah. Yeah.
Adam: But he played oboe right up to about about year 10 or 11.
Christina: Okay:
Penny: Yeah. And so was your musical education kind of from your family or also at school?
Adam: Look, we had a fabulous primary school program. I should also just before we get onto that, I should also mention my mother's a singer as well.
Penny: Oh, okay.
Adam: And also a very significant name in music education. She's, working as a curriculum manager for the VCAA in music.
Penny: So both your parents were teachers?
Adam: Yeah. Yeah.
Penny: Me too.
Christina: Yeah. Me too.
Adam: Yep. And that's both my my brother's a primary school teacher now. Yep. And and
Christina: Just runs it it's a genetic thing. In your DNA.
Adam: Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. So certainly grew up in a musical musical family. And then at the primary school we were at, and I guess this sort of ties in nicely with my primary school program, is something that I witnessed firsthand was a really creative and open minded school community where we would have these wonderful, which again, I'm biased because my dad ran them, but he'd put on, a musical every year that was performed by all the grade fives and sixes, but everyone would have a role, everyone'd be involved.
It was all student led. The band was 80% primary school students, you know, with a couple of teachers helping out, keeping it all together. The lighting would be done by students.
Penny: Cos not everyone wants to be on the stage.
Adam: No. That's right. My dad would actually write the musicals, and they were often based in a period in history, and that would be the inquiry topic for history for the curriculum for the school for that year.
Christina: That's great.
Adam: He did one based in the Goldfields. He did one based in, on completely set on a ship traveling with convicts in the early settler days of Australia. For the Goldfields one, for example, they had a working sluice box that was built by student built by students. Built as a stage prop, but it was built and sort of, you know, tested by students. That's amazing.
Penny: They had to buy all the props with money from the gold that they had found.
Christina: Yeah. It was a lot of time at Sovereign Hill.
Adam: But but, I mean, I guess, you know, we we talk about education being literacy and numeracy and all this sort of thing, and this was everything. This was all in one thing. You know, the artistically motivated students would help design the costumes. As an extension activity for English students that help hone the scripts down, and and it was just just a real whole school community sort of sort of thing.
Christina: That sounds incredible.
Adam: Yeah. And it's it's difficult to do that in the structure of today's education now.
Penny: A lot of boxes to tick.
Adam: Yeah. Well, it's there's so many other obligations on teachers these days that it's it's really hard to be able to work outside of the box like that. I'm very grateful for to be able to have experienced all of that firsthand and also, I mean, to be able to see that from the lens of the teacher as well. So, you know, going on holiday with with my family, my dad would have the sketchbook sitting outside the campsite in Mallacoota with a sketchbook sketching out, you know, the set plans for next year's musical and all that sort of stuff, that creative process stuff. I had that window and all of that as well.
Penny: Yeah, it's definitely not 9 to 3:30, is it?
Adam: No. But it also taught me a couple of important things. One is that primary school kids are capable of so much more than what your straight curriculum sort of offers them. When they have a chance to say this is something that doesn't exist yet. Let's make it happen. That's teaching kids that lesson as well, and you had some kind words about the concert that we performed, last year. And to be able to say, well, let's get all the kids to memorize a couple of bars and sit up in the in the balconies and play a couple of notes at the end of the first piece. That's something that's it's not something that you would necessarily think of or
Penny: It was unexpected. It was
Adam: Yeah. Being able to think outside the box and be creative and do things in the way that it's not you know, we hire this venue, we play these pieces out of this band book, and everyone claps, and we all go home.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: No let's do it a little bit differently.
Penny: Yeah. That definitely came through. I'll continue with this article about, Dyamond.
'He left Bairnsdale in 1903, and his first opportunity to lead a band came while he was working at Morewell. Keen to join a band, he made inquiries and was informed that band practice was held at the local newspaper office.
He attended one evening to find that the band consisted of 5 members, including the newspaper proprietor and the Church of England clergyman, who played a clarinet and who also officiated as band master. When the band practice ended, the clergyman nominated mister Dyamond as band master, and he was elected."
So he obviously went along. There was a shit band, and they went, okay. You're in charge now.
Christina: Yes. Sort it out.
Penny: So, playing in a band, leading a band, it's a different thing. How did you start?
Adam: So I studied music at Melbourne University. I did a year at Victorian College of the Arts, took a year off to to do some I guess what you call now a gap year
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: Where I just worked and, as a musician, did every possible said yes to everything and did some a whole whole bunch of really, really random sort of gigs. And then then I went to Melbourne University and did my full degree there. And as part of that, I put my hand up, directed the Melbourne University Engineers concert band engineering concert band. The Engineering Music Society concert band.
Penny: Did you? My sister was in there. EMS.
Adam: EMS. Yeah. .
Adam: I conducted the concert band and the stage band. It ran parallel with the orchestra There was Tony Brooks used to run the orchestra.
Penny: I would have come to a couple of your concerts.
Adam: Oh, possibly. Yeah. You live in Balwyn. You come to EMS concerts.
Christina: It's all creepy.
Penny: Interesting. Sometimes they had the after party at our house. Good times.
Adam: Was it called beer and Freddos?
Penny: Yeah. I can remember something about that. Yeah.
Adam: It was beer and Freddos was the the Monday night after the the end of semester concert was beer and Freddos.
Penny: Yeah. I didn't got to that. Okay.
Christina: Maybe you weren't invited.
Penny: Fun time. I was invited.
Adam: Everyone was invited to Beer and Freddos. Yeah. But that was look. That that was a that was chance for me to, you know I'd sat under enough conductors, and I'm the sort of person that if if I don't like the way something's going, I try and I don't sort of sit there and put up with it. Yeah.
Penny: You've got some thoughts.
Adam: I try and be an agent for change, I guess. Generally in the in the politest way I can. But, but when opportunity arises, some something like that, I thought it was great fun.
Penny: Okay. I'll keep reading.
"Dyamond realized that more players would have to be found to build up a well balanced band, and he had commenced a one man recruiting campaign. After several weeks of interviews, which involved a lot of journey on horseback at night, Mister Dyamond had a band of 20 performers."
So that's very similar to today. That's what you do, isn't it? You get on your horse and you ride around to all the parents' houses
Christina: After hours.
Adam: Yeah. Thankfully, communication's a little easier these days.
Penny: "That was how he commenced, and he maintained his initiative and his interest particularly in training juveniles over the years."
These days, you only hear the word juveniles in a negative context.
Christina: In relation to the youth justices system.
Penny: Yeah.
Adam: Interesting. Brass Band still clarify one of their sections as juvenile. It's the under 15 section. Because junior is, well, in most parts of the country, is under 19, and juvenile is under 15.
Christina: Off to Juvie.
Adam: Yep.
Penny: "But he has also acquired a very valuable knowledge of leadership and ban contesting, which has been revealed in the quality and efficiency of the bands he has conducted. In his brief stay in Bairnsdale, Mister Dyamond gave the Citizens Band some very helpful instruction. Mister Dyamond made it clear that there is no easy way to success as a bandsman. He fully endorsed the answer given by a great violinist when asked what he attributed his success when he replied that it was due to 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration."
Do you have any thoughts on this? How important is natural talent?
Adam: It almost seems like I've written this question for you. Because this is a hot button topic for me. I worked once with a chaplain who praised God for the gifts of the musicians that I presented at a performance. And what whatever your beliefs in that may be, those kids worked bloody hard.
Penny: Yeah.
Adam: You know what I mean? I mean, you can attribute their their efforts and intents to work on some sort of high power if you like, but if you teach someone and they wanna be taught, they'll do well.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: It is it is work. There's no magic. I I was very fortunate. For about 10 years, some s local educators ran, I think, called the Melbourne International Festival of Brass, and it was it was run by a guy called Geoff Collinson, who's a who was the head of brass at Melbourne University when I was there. Fabulous educator. He brought out all these fantastic world regarded players, and it just coincided with the time when I was at university and, you know, ready to sort of absorb that sort of level of knowledge.
There was a trumpet teacher called Bobby Shue who's, passed away now, but he was out here doing a series of master classes and performances. He's a legendary player. You will have heard him play. You won't know that you've heard him play. He'll be in in recordings of countless artists, and he was the sort of one of the go to players around Los Angeles and West Coast of America.
And he was the guy for many years. He was if you had someone who was gonna make it as a professional trumpet player, you would send him to Bobby for a couple of lessons. So he was a really sought after teacher.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: Now he was out here for this festival. He'd finished his sort of concert. And as you would imagine at a brass festival, everyone went to the pub afterwards. And from some turn of fate, I found myself sitting at a table with him and some other brass luminaries. A very, very young me sort of sitting there just, why am I at this table? This is amazing.
And Bobby was holding court about his sort of, you know, giving his wisdom as the visiting visiting elders would do. The thing that absolutely sunk in with me was he said what everyone comes to him for and pays him, you know, good money for lessons, they say, is my child talented? And so he said to answer that question, he had to work out what talent was. What he came up with was that talent is an absence of boundaries.
Now that boundary could be a bad attitude. That boundary could be financial, might not be able to afford lessons or good instrument, might be geographical, might not have access.
Penny: In my case, it might be an almost complete lack of rhythm.
Adam: Oh, well. See a good educator will say there's that's no such thing.
Penny: I know.
Adam: Just an unexercised muscle. That's all it is.
Penny: Oh, okay.
Adam: That's sorry. Sorry. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna hold on that.
Penny: I mean, one thing that does happen a little bit on this podcast is it does turn into a therapy session for me.
Adam: I listen to a lot of podcasts.
Christina: Penny's got a lot to work through.
Penny: I have my yeah. My musical education, I was in bands, and I played the clarinet, and I just felt hopeless. I think it was partly because I was so nervous of playing in front of other people.
Adam: Yeah. Well, may maybe the nerves were that boundary for you, and it's so so the idea being that if you can identify those boundaries and work a way around them, then you have talent. If that boundary is a hard thing that you're not gonna get past, then that's your absence of talent. Yeah. I just I just keep coming back to it because you can say, look, a kid can have you know, can be a bit distractible or it could be, you know, bit what other people might write off as, you know, as unteachable, but you go, well. What is this what is the thing that's stopping them from having a good education?
Is it maybe that they're not being challenged enough? Well, let's come come and have some cornet lessons with me, and I'll I'll give you something to challenge you. And yeah. So that that is something that guides my education philosophy a lot, that idea. Sometimes all too often the boundaries of parents, the attitude of the parents, whether that's putting too much pressure or trying to give backseat advice in a way that's negatively affecting the students' learning or, you know, the sort of get in the teacher's ear and try and manipulate the process.
Penny: I have heard teachers sometimes say that it's not the kids, it's the parents they have trouble with.
Adam: Yeah. Well, absolutely.
Christina: Absolutely. 100%. Nothing ruins my day more than a shouting parent in front office I need to talk to.
Adam: And in in some ways, I mean, this is not to diss my other place of employment, which is a private school, but I find the parents generally at the primary school in Richmond to be much, to be so grateful for the experience they're able to get that they're lovely and supportive and wonderful. Whereas, if you get a parent that's paying tens of thousands of dollars a year, that
Christina: It's an entitlement.
Adam: It is an entitlement, and it and it's sometimes, sometimes, very rarely in my case, I find that occasionally does lead to a parent being overbearing or unpleasant.
Christina: Yes, I can imagine that.
Penny: And Dyamond also just emphasized the importance of practice here.
"To become a good player of any musical instrument, said Mister Dyamond, a young bandsman must be prepared to practice and to practice a kind of music which will help him to cultivate the quality of tone he must produce from the instrument and to be able to play the variety of music which a good band is called upon to play."
Practice is important, isn't it?
Adam: It's a cycle. If you practice, you get better, you get to play a higher a bigger role in the music, you get more excited about what you're doing, which makes you wanna practice. Occasionally, look, I've got a couple of students that don't practice much, but still progress.
Christina: Yeah.
Penny: They sound annoying.
Adam: At this stage, what's most important to me is that they keep going. They keep they they keep playing. So I I try and offer enough of a challenge in the program that that allows a student to just to every now and again, okay, there might be a lapse, you know, not everyone's gonna be a superstar and practice as much as my highest performing students.
I've got I've got a student I started at my private school last year who she started as a young girl playing tuba in grade 4 and she practices half an hour a day, every day. And she has progressed further than some of my middle school students in the space of a couple of terms because she just practices every day. And there's, like, there's no hiding from it. The hard thing is when you go into rehearsal and you say, well, I'm not gifted like her.
Penny: Yeah.
Christina: But behind the scenes.
Adam: No. It's not gifted. And this goes back to that talent discussion. It's, you know, you don't see what she's
Christina: Yeah. What she's doing out of hours.
Adam: There's a meme that gets passed around between music teachers, which is, it's a picture of an iceberg. You see the the underside, and the underside is marked the preparation, and then the little bit poking out is the performance.
Penny: Christina, you played the piano and, the recorder,
Penny: Which I did as well.
Penny: What are your reflections on your musical education? Positive?
Christina: Yeah. Look. I mean, the recorder was more that that was what we did at school, and then I was in the recorder club. And I think the main motivation there was I wanted to play the big alto recorder.
Adam: Oh, I was the same?
Christina: Yeah. I didn't want the the standard one that we all had the plastic pocket when we took it home. I wanted the big one.
Penny: Did you get the big one?
Christina: I did. I did.
Penny: Excellent.
Christina: And then piano, I guess that was a fairly solitary undertaking. I did that, I don't know, probably from about grade 2 or grade 3 up until about year 9.
Adam: It's an interesting one about the piano because, I try and make this point when I do my recruiting at the primary school, and that is that it's a great thing to be able to do to sit down and play piano. But as a kid, you can't, there aren't that many opportunities to play piano with other kids.
Christina: No. You don't all gather your pianos is in a circle.
Adam: No. No. It a fantastic grounding to have. I wish my piano skills were better. I wish I could sit down and play the way that I've seen other people play.
I went and saw Harry Connick Jr
Christina: Yeah. Amazing.
Adam: Just before Christmas.
Penny: Can't play piano?
Adam: I I fiddle. I dabble. I don't have any sort of training in it. I can sort of, you know, bust out some chords and stuff, and that's mainly as a prop to help me compose and to sort of understand functional harmony for that sort of educational reasons. But I don't think I would say I've ever performed on piano.
Penny: So in 1917, Dyamond started the Richmond boys' brand. Now it was a boys' band, but these days, we let girls have a go too. Don't we?
Adam: I would say we top of my head, we're about 50/50.
Penny: Yep. Excellent.
Adam: Gender balance at Richmond West.
Penny: Sounds about right.
Adam: It's probably not reflected in the broader brass community yet, but it's on that trajectory. It's certainly in my in my lifetime, it's become become a lot more equal. And there's a big push in the performance community to have much more visual representation.
Penny: Oh, that's good. I mean, there were some female brass bands early on, late 19th century.
Adam: Yep.
28:16 Penny: And early 20th. It was a novelty usually, and then also there was often quite a bit of criticism. By 1918, the Richmond Boys Brass Band were ready for their first gig.
And so this is an article from the Richmond Guardian, our favorite, 12th of January 1918.
"Richmond boys brass band to make debut at Racecourse Carnival for blind soldiers. Amazing growth of notable movement that will bring fame to this district."
Christina: Excellent.
Penny: Likely to add further luster on Richmond and provide another fine advertisement for this district, the Richmond boys brass band will make its first public appearance on February 16th when it will assist to enliven proceedings at the big carnival at the Richmond Racecourse in aid of the blind soldiers fund."
So I love the way they talk about it, like it's gonna bring fame, it's luster, it's just. You know, this is what a community needs. It's a real
Christina: It's gonna galvanize them.
Penny: Cherry on the top. Yep.
"The establishment of the band stands forever as a unique monument to the public spirit and interest of one citizen, constable JT Dyamond, A musical enthusiast and himself a bandsman and composer of no little ability, Constable Dyamond conceived the idea of establishing a boys band here."
So he was really the driving force behind this boys' band. But what made you decide Richmond West needs a brass program? They didn't have one before you started.
Adam: No. No. Well, I mean so I I sent my own kids to the school. Yeah. When my younger daughter was in prep, sorry, my elder daughter was in prep, there was a parents' forum with the principal where some families were invited to give some feedback.
And what a few people said was they'd really like an instrumental music program. Now as someone who does that for a job in a private school, and and I was part time there, still am, at my other school, and I was stay at home parenting with the young kids. So I had a little bit of time to be able to I I had some time I could fill up as the kids were getting older, and I thought, well, I've been involved with a couple of really high level junior brass programs. So I was involved with a band called Gunnedah Shire Band. Gunnedah is near Tamworth, Armadale, sort of Northern New South Wales.
I was a member of Gunnedah Shire Band for quite a while despite never having lived there. When I moved to Sydney, I got asked to sort of join this brass band and it was extremely high level. We won the national competition a couple of times. The core group of that are now called Sydney City Brass, and I'm a member of that band, the current national champions.
Penny When do you practise?
Practice. So say national competition's Easter, so I'll go up I'll fly up Sydney for, 3 or 4 weekends rehearsal. It's a project based band, so we don't rehearse week in, week out. It's a fabulous group of musicians, and one of the parts of this program was their junior program was exceptional. When I was there, they were winning, they won their 11th junior a grade national title in a row. And they've produced some of the finest brass band musicians in Australia.
So having seen how that program was run and the level to which, young band players could progress. Schools tend to run concert band programs with clarinets and flutes and oboes and and things as well.
Penny: Yes. They do.
Adam: That's only been a thing for sort of 40, 50 years. Before that, it was all brass bands.
Allowing these young students to firstly listen to the senior Gunnedah band, so they were were listening to the highest level banding in Australia as as an example, and we would in the breaks from our rehearsals, we would work with and tutor the the junior band players, so having that mentorship sort of role. But then they would be playing really high level music as well. So having access to stuff that was a little bit trickier and and and sort of opening that, raising the bar that they had to jump over, and they jumped over it consistently.
Christina: That's incredible.
Adam: And so they would perform. I I remember I was touring there with a Music Viva group, a brass quintet called Shrewd Brass. And we went to Gunnedah as part of this tour. We went into the band room to meet the people who were hosting us, and the junior band were there rehearsing, and the other musicians who hadn't seen them before sort of looked at them and then sort of looked away from the stage and then looked at them and looked away. And they were trying to marry up in their heads these kids with their feet not touching the ground off the chair, but playing with a sound that was
Christina: Yeah way beyond.
Adam: Way, way beyond. Miles beyond. I mean, so there were look, there were some older kids there. This is all under 19s. So there was some sort of 17, 18 year olds.
Penny: So they're your juniors?
Adam: Yes.
Penny: Not your juveniles.
Adam: Correct. Yes.
Christina: I'd failed to retain that. Sorry.
Adam: But, looking at the band and you're sort of closing your eyes and listening to that that sound, that really polished, warm, blended sound, and then looking and, you know, seeing the kids swinging their feet.
Christina: Hard to rectify.
Adam: They couldn't. It was a real sort of it was a real sort of disconnect, understanding that kids can reach that. And that that high expectation that I have of what kids are able to do.
Penny: And so when you started at West Richmond that sort of what you had as your background?
Adam: Oh, look, I grew up playing concert bands and orchestras. I didn't play in a brass band until I was 25.
Penny: The lost years!
Adam: I'd just never been asked. I do, I still play a lot of different types of music, and I love all of the things that I do. But brass bands just have this connection with me.
That sound where everyone's sort of pulling together to create one unified sound, which is not the case with a, you know, an orchestra or concert band that have have all these different colors. Sort of in the way that a string section in orchestra, you have all the different sizes of instruments, but they're all trying to produce one blended sound, and with brass bands, that's what you're trying to do. So you're part of something bigger rather than trying to stand out for yourself.
Christina: All your little sections.
Adam: So if get heard on a performance, I've done bad. You know what I mean? Like, it's it's that that notion of the the group is stronger than the whole. A choir as opposed to a series of solo voices. Adolphe Sax who invented the saxophone. Yeah? So early 1800.
Penny: Could have been the Adolphophone, but he went for saxophone.
Adam: No. He went for saxophone. If you look at a saxophone, you have the alto and the tenor and the baritone, which are the three most common ones. But you also have the soprano, the sopranino, and the soprillo. And you also have the bass and the contrabass. So what you have is 10 different instruments that are progressively larger versions of the same instrument, and that's exactly what a brass band is.
His concept was and this is, you think of it in the context of the industrial revolution. People are inventing new things, manufacturing new things, and he thought if I could make these new instruments. Like, people don't make new instruments, the whole electronic scene is something different, but I mean, if you see an orchestra, most of the instruments in the orchestra have been around at least a 100 years. You know, every now and again, some renegade puts a, you know, a whirly, you know, pipe or a dustbin lid or something as a new color, but but essentially. But this sort of period, the early early 1800s, people were inventing new instruments left, right, and center. Adolphe Sax also invented a horn, a brass instrument that he had progressively smaller and larger versions of, and that's what the brass band comes from. It's called there were sax horns, and if you go to, you know, a music instrument museum in Belgium, that's what you'll see.
You'll see the sax horn, not the not the euphonium and the baritone and the tenor horn. You'll hear bass sax horn and the tenor sax horn and the
Penny: Oh, so that idea of the brass band was there from the invention of the instrument.
Adam: Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, so around that time you had the the invention of valves of brass instruments was about 1817, I think. So around that time is when you start having valve brass instruments, and that's when all these sort of new inventions come up. And by the sort of 1840s, you had the well, what we now call a brass band in in in the UK.
Penny: Well, we're not gonna get into it now, Christina, but just going back to your instrument, the recorder. Well, that was actually an instrument that was rediscovered. So people didn't play it for hundreds of years, and then they,
Christina: And then some teachers and parents all around the world have regretted that rediscovery ever since.
Adam: Well, look, to to give the recorder its its credit, it's extremely cheap
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: And accessible. And that's as a as the son of of curriculum director of music, equity and access to affordable music programs is a key thing that we don't always take into account.
Christina: Well I know the class sets at our school are put through the dishwasher in the staff room as well after use.
Adam: Yeah, they're taking it taking it seriously.
Penny: So funny. Okay. I'll carry on with this article.
"He put the matter unofficially before the committee of the Richmond City Brass Band, and it was agreed that a juvenile band would be most decidedly be an acquisition to the district. Such a band, it was realized, would prove a valuable asset to the senior band movement as the junior players would grow up with a knowledge of band music gained early in youth when the mind is most receptive. And having such a field to draw upon, it was probable that the Richmond City senior band would very soon attain to a position of preeminence over all other bands. In addition, it would be a notable step forward in the musical education of the youth of the city."
So the whole idea of starting this junior band was to funnel them up to the senior band. Is there somewhere for kids the Richmond West? Are we funneling them up somewhere now?
Adam: So, yeah. As of about a year and a half ago, the Richmond Youth Brass Band, which you saw in that concert you went to, that has been established. We now have a band now in the current rules in Victoria have youth music going up to the age of 22. At the moment, the band's primarily sort of 12 to 15 year old. There's a couple of kids that are from the primary school that are that are there for extension, but majority are young high school students.
And so that's their progression. And then because people don't tend to stay where they are, I don't have any intention of starting a senior band because there are some other great senior bands around. If I was starting this in a country town a 100 years ago, if you grow up in Bairnsdale like like our good friend, he may well have stayed stayed there and and been the band master until for the rest of his life. And that's certainly what was was the case in a lot of those country towns and still is in in in some. I mean, the Gunnedah program, Laurence Rowe who's been there for his whole life and his son Anthony is now conducting the band. So the family involvement is still very strong.
Penny: So the article continues,
"But how to do it? Difficulties immediately appeared in the way, and it seemed that they were insurmountable. The senior ban had scarcely enough money at credit for its own purposes, and it could, as a body, offer only limited practical support. Mister Dyamond, however, went straight ahead. He stated his willingness to receive and instruct pupils, and an announcement to that effect appeared in The Guardian. He got 2 boys.
Christina: Oh, no.
Penny: "In the in the following week, another announcement appeared, and he got 6 more pupils. This was sufficient nucleus for Mister Dyamond to begin."
So how many students did you have in the first year at Richmond West?
Adam: We did a little demonstration. I got some friends in, did a little performance at the school concert at the end of 2018, I guess that would have been. And I announced that there was gonna be a music program, and these instruments would be available.
Penny: Yay!
Adam: We ended the year with about 25.
Christina: Nice.
Penny: That's better than Dyamond.
Adam: Well, I mean, when you're recruiting like, directly within a primary school, it's a lot easier. I mean, if if you say
Christina: You can hunt them down on the slide.
Adam: Well yes. Best not talk about predatory No. Around playgrounds.
Penny: Yeah.
Adam: But parents are much more willing and open to things where they don't have to actually do anything.
Christina: They don't have to drive anywhere.
Penny: Absolutely
Adam: kids are already at school. The lessons are there. Makes it a lot easier. So that was definitely the easier way to do it.
Penny: "The interest of other boys and the parents of other boys was soon aroused. Today, Mister Dyamond has a boys band of 36 performers."
How many do you have now?
Adam: At the on paper at the moment, I have 91 students in the 3 bands at Richmond West Primary.
Penny: That's like a third. How how many kids are there? Roughly 270 or something.
Penny: So it's big.
Adam: And I only take students from grade 2 and up. So so yeah. So it's a significant proportion. But and then I've got another sort of 30 odd in the in the community youth band as well.
Penny: "Dyamond has bent to his big task of training them as a labor of love. He taught them the first rudiments of band music, and after theory came practice on instruments, which he borrowed from the members of the senior Richmond City band. This, of course, was not completely satisfactory to the boys. They wanted their own instruments. The acquirement of a full set of band instruments is a costly proceeding. Some pieces cost very much more than others. A set of 4 basses runs into at least a £100,"
and I think that's about $10,000 converting it to today's money.
Adam: I wish it was that.
Penny: Yeah. So it's more expensive?
Adam: Oh, actually, well, I guess if you went with sort of student models, it'd be about $20-25. For for for brand name ones. If you went for the high end ones, it'd be the high end ones are closer to 15 to $20,000 each.
Penny: So how much of a barrier is cost now to parents, and how did you go about funding it? How'd you get them?
Adam: In terms of the instruments, firstly, having some connections in some private schools allowed me to source some secondhand some some donated instruments.
Penny: You didn't just nick 'em?
Adam: No. The arms race of private schools means that
Penny: They've gotta get new ones.
Adam: They've gotta get new stuff, and then they've gotta have some way to get rid of the old stuff. So I put out a bit of a social media call, tagged a couple of music departments, and they said, 'Yeah, sure. You can have this and this and this.' I got a, you know, a drum kit donated from a a commercial drummer friend of mine been sitting in his garage. I got some trombones from I'll give them a shout out. Wesley College. They've been very generous. Percussion equipment from Carey Grammar and a number of other sources.
It was material that was not good enough for those students anymore, they'd upgraded, but absolutely good enough for a community music program.
Christina: Yeah. For sure.
Adam: For the upper brass instruments, for the smaller ones, we ended up oh, basically, we asked parents to buy their own, but there's a company that imports Chinese made lower cost instruments.
Penny: Can you put 'em in the dishwasher?
Adam: I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I'd treat treat them reasonably carefully, but they're they're of sufficient quality to give a good experience to a student. I would never put something that I wasn't happy to, you know, I did a bit of research and found things that were
Penny: Cos it would be very discouraging, wouldn't it, if you had
Adam: Look. I mean, I initially looked at a whole lot of sort of old instruments that were in the back store rooms of some of the community brass bands, and I've got in my garage, I've got a number of 60, 70 year old cornets and things, and they're just not what I wanna put in the hands of kids. It's because, you know, they smell a little bit, and they're a bit musty, and and they they just don't, you know, the the valves have worn down, so there's air leaking, so you just don't get a proper sound. Whereas if we get these, Chinese made ones, they're they're shiny.
Christina: They look exciting.
Adam: They're made of lesser quality materials than a good brand name one would be. And and if a student is looking to extend themselves, a student of mine just upgraded their instrument recently to a a good brand name on, and, you know, they're willing to spend the money because
Christina: They knew they wanted to go on.
Adam: With the larger instruments, the tubas are the you you mentioned basses before, which refers to
Penny: Is that a tuba?
Adam: It's a tuba, yeah. I look at Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace most days, and when something pops up, someone sells an instrument, if it's a bargain, I just buy it myself, and then there's a bit there's a bit of a budget in the school. So the the school have never put any money into the program. We were lucky enough to get a couple of small government grants at the start, which helped us get a couple of instruments that would be available for hire, and then the money that's raised from those hire then sort of goes into a pot.
And then as I find bargains online for tubas. So now, I mean, we have, like, we've got more tuba players in this primary program, I believe, than anywhere else in the country. Yeah. Because it's really hard to get young kids to play the tuba unless you're a passionate recruiter like I am.
Christina: Yes. Yeah.
Adam: And so in our senior band next year, we should have 5 tuba players. At the start of last year, we had 10 tuba players on our books in a primary school program, which is outrageous.
Penny: So Dyamond, he approached it. He did a bit of fundraising, so they do had picture entertainment and they had subscriptions.
Adam: Well, I think what that might actually refer to is a subscription series of concerts.
Penny: Yeah.
Adam: So you you say, I'm gonna put on a a concert every every 2 months. You pay this annual subscription. You come to all those concerts for free, and I think that was the done way of funding things around then.
Penny: Yeah. And the article continues.
"The band was well on its way. The youthful members of it have not been less enthusiastic than their instructor with the fine result that now with 7 months training behind them, they can give a very fair performance. The youngest player in the band is 8 years of age, and the oldest for the heavier wind instruments is 18. The average age is between 12 and 14 years.
So grade 2 is the start, isn't it? At Richmond West. Yeah. Do you think that's about right?
Adam: I don't take students younger than that, and I've been quite firm on that, to the point where my own kids didn't start till them. The the main thing is I just need kids to be mature enough to sit through a rehearsal without getting too distracted. And 2 years of sitting in class, I think, is enough to sort of train them.
Christina: Enough training.
Penny: Yeah. And one thing I think I remember you saying at the concert in the middle of the year, the reason why you do the rehearsals in the morning is that if it's in after school, no one's
Adam: And the reason is you drop a kid off in the morning, they are bleary eyed, and they're just not ready to argue. And by the end of a school day, they wanna tell each other what happened.
Penny: Oh, yeah. They've got stories.
Adam: The funny thing that happened in class and the funny thing, you know, what happened at lunchtime, what they're gonna have for dinner, and all sort stuff. And I've had I've had groups not just at Richmond West, but at other schools where we normally rehearse before school, but we had to after school because of an excursion or something, and it's just been, we just get half as much done.
Penny: Yeah. It's chaos.
Adam: Yeah.
Penny: Okay. The article continues.
"It is intended to strengthen the band with 4 more players, making a full band of 40 performers. Parents who are interested and would like to seize this splendid opportunity for their boys are invited to see mister JJ Lacey at 157 Bridge Road."
The papers used to just love to give someone's full full address.
Adam: Not everyone would have had phones then.
Penny: No. No. So they just used to they were always just telling people where people lived.
Christina: Just go and bang on the door.
Penny: Particularly victims of crime.
"Or mister JT Diamond at the Richmond Police Station."
It's not cos he was in the cells. He was a police officer as well.
Christina: Good to clarify.
Penny: And there's quite a few articles in Trove about him giving evidence in court. So he had another job and he's doing the band. You have at least two jobs and you're a parent. How do you fit all this in. Tell us about the juggle.
Adam: So I left the the navy band. So navy band was a full time job. I was there until I left at the end of 2012. So start of 2013, I picked up 2 days of teaching. I alluded to it before my wife is in the business sector. She can earn way more money than I can as a musician. I was a stay at home dad 3 days a week and a teacher 2 days of the week. That sort of slowly grew over the next couple of years. It's yeah. Just incrementally grew.
As as the kids got older, I was able to you know, they're happy to for them to spend more time in childcare and kinder, what have you. Ended up just being one private school, and I'm now there 3 and a half days a week. And then I'm at Richmond West 1 and a half days. I have another teacher on now.
Penny: Yes. That's good.
Adam: I brought another teacher on to help me. She takes the the middle band, the intermediate band. So I do a day and a half at Richmond West, But then outside of that, I also have the youth band, which is a week, a weeknight. I perform freelance still, and then whatever time I have left goes to composition, and then perform yeah, performance and parenting and
Penny: You wouldn't watch much telly, would you?
Adam: Not a huge amount. But, you know, there look, I come home from work brain dead like some other people, and, you know, by the time the kids are in bed, don't always have the energy to
Penny: You're not always, like, right now to the masterpiece!
Adam: No. No. That's the composition more comes in the holidays. So I'm in I'm in school holidays.
Penny: That's what you should be doing now.
Adam: Well, that's when I have time to time to sit down and discuss things.
Penny: Sorry!
Adam: No. That's that's fine. That's fine.
Penny: So the Richmond Boys Brass Band went on. They got more gigs. They played a lot of football games. And in August 1918, they played for 30,000 spectators at the MCG. Christina: Wow.
Penny: And there were a few events celebrating the end of World War 1, and so, you know, they were doing really well.
Adam: Well, like I said, they couldn't just, you know, crank up the the P.A. system. No. So if you wanted any sort of vibe at that festival for the parade
Penny: Get the band.
Adam: Yeah.
49:07 Penny: But then, also at the end of World War 1, something else came along, which was the influenza pandemic. And this affected the Richmond Boys' Brass Band. So this is from the Richmond Guardian from the 1st March 1919.
"City reserve not available for band performances."
Subtitle:
"Would music be soothing to sufferers in hospital? Further applications by the socialist party in the Richmond Juvenile Brass Band for the use of the city reserve proved as futile on Monday night as those refused a fortnight previously by Richmond City Council. On the first occasion, the reason given for the refusals was that the influenza epidemic was too serious for sanction to be given for the assembling of a large number of persons."
Now we all know a little bit about, pandemics. So you started the program in 19 - 1918, 2018.
Christina: Really plugging away at it.
Adam: It's it's incredible the parallels, isn't it? Just after starting having to go into.
Christina: It's creepy, isn't it?
Penny: I don't think they had as many restrictions as you did though because they kept having rehearsals.
Adam: Yeah. No. We we were pretty limited. Yeah. So, look, I talked about creativity as being a big part of education before.
With my private school teaching, I had to do all my lessons face like online, Zoom or Microsoft Teams face to face. And so I repurposed my garage, you know, made a little teaching studio in there for that stuff. Because I teach everyone in groups at Richmond West, and group learning online is just a
Penny: You can't do it with just music because there's a delay.
Adam: So Yeah. My private school was actually the first in Victoria to go down with a reported case, and so we closed about a week before the term holiday started. So I had about 3 weeks from when they closed to when I had to start teaching. I built a website to put resources up on. I recorded about 24 hours of of lesson videos.
So, basically, the the way my beginner program runs is I have about 9 lessons that are a page long each, and I basically did a 10 minute video of every lesson for every instrument
Penny: Wow.
Adam: As a as a sort of a it's all pretty scrappy, but it's it was enough to sort of have something available on offer.
Penny: Was there a big variation in how the kids took to it?
Adam: Yeah absolutely, there was. I mean, some some kids look some kids didn't.
And that's fine. And I and I sort of said, well, look, what what I what I'm able to offer is these resources for you to do at your leisure. Now what that allows you to do is to to pursue them. You can print some of this stuff out, and you don't have to stare at a screen.
So you can have something have it as a screen break, do your video lesson for school, play some sport or whatever, come and do watch some TV, and then go do your corne5 practice. Just to break things up a little bit. I also, as part of that, I wrote a thing called the Lockdown Olympics. 2020 was an Olympics year?
Penny: It was meant to be.
Adam: It was meant to be. So I created a thing called the Lockdown Decathlon. They were Olympics themed, but musically relevant. So there was one called the Sprint where there was a 4 bar rhythm that you had to play as fast as you could, but accurately. Right?
You just record it as a voice voice app or a video on your phone. Send it to me. I will have a look at it when I have a moment. Could be tomorrow. Could be this afternoon. Could be in 3 days' time. When I have a chance, I will I promise you I'll reply. And then I basically would reply, 'Hey. Great job. Just look, the the rhythm in the third bar is not quite right. Have another go.' Or I'd say, 'Congratulations. You've passed that.'
And I kept a little record, and I said, you just had to pass. Take as many goes as you want. If you passed all 10 events, I would give you a medal at the end of it.
Unusual thing was the program grew. The kids that I started in 2020, I probably lost about around half of them. Maybe I kept about 18 or 17 out of about 30 who started beginner band that year. I don't know of many instrumental programs that grew.
Penny: Yeah. So when you came back, more people wanted to join?
Adam: Yeah. So so over and in 2021, of course, was the same. We had had another term long lockdown, And same thing, I did another lockdown I did another decathlon, and we basically opened up the same exercises. I said, I've I've put all these resources up. If you can pay your band fees, great. If you can't pay them, don't worry. If you are under a little bit of pressure and can, you know, and wanna pay half, that's fine. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna question anyone.
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: But it's just part of my salary, and I'm I'm working really hard to provide what I can, and people were really generous, and they were able to keep it financially working for me, and I was able to support. Like I said, some kids really excelled because I just found the little tasks and the the little thing. I then added another an another element to that as well where I wrote some solo pieces, so I sort of took the Olympics thing and made it into more formal sort of, like, similar to AMEB music exam. So I've got my own little system of that, which I still run to this day.
Penny: Back to 1918:
"Councilor Paling urged that a permit be given to Richmond City Band to play in the reserve, and he sought to ridicule the objections of Councilor Kemp that patients in the emergency hospital adjacent to the reserve would be disturbed by the band's performance. He said that on several nights each week, practice took place in the city band room, which was even nearer the hospital, and such practice was not likely to be so much appreciated by the hospital inmates as the concord of sweet sounds that would issue from performances. He gave this testimony to the soothing effects of good music."
And so what's the modern thinking? A brass band soothing for invalids?
Do you have a brass band outside all the hospitals? That's what I'm wondering.
Adam: I don't know I can answer that to be honest. But, look, generally, brass instruments aren't quite as squeaky as
Penny: They're not.
Adam: And this is not to rubbish the other instruments, but
Christina: Yeah.
Adam: Brass instruments, they don't overpower you at that young age. They're not as cornet players start playing higher and louder and developing a bit more strength. By the time they're getting to that register, they've been playing for long enough to
Penny: So that should be pretty good.
Adam: Yeah.
Penny: I mean, what I found with having one come into my home, last year is that I was surprised by how loud it was. It was loud, but it was never really, like I was never, like, oh, my god that's
Adam: I mean, you compare it with a drumkit or. A lot of my good friends play saxophone, but beginner saxophones.
Penny: Oh, yeah.
Adam: Yeah. Trying desperately to to rip out 'Careless Whisper' or something like that.
Generally, the sense of of of goodwill about hearing kids doing things is just far overcomes most of that. And when I talk about those boundaries, talent being those absence of boundaries, an open minded supportive parent will listen to that and go, 'hey, this is really cool'. And and especially, I mean, as a parent of that beginner band, how surprised were you at the sound when you heard their first performance as a group?
Penny: Yes.
Adam: Like that progression that happens in that first 6 months is it's my favorite performance that I do at any level is conducting that first performance by the beginner band when they're first playing harmonized full sort of pieces.
Penny: It really is remarkable because they do look little, and they and you know they haven't been playing long.
Adam: I take the students every year to busk in the Gleadle Street market to raise money for the Salvation Army, and we just get the most wonderful comments.
Penny: So the whole idea, initially, with this Richmond boys band was to funnel into the senior band. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a breakdown.
Christina: Oh, god.
56:45 Penny: We've got a bit of controversy. This is from the Richmond Guardian on the 1st of March 1919, and it's a letter to the editor. So someone was not happy about the situation.
"Monopoly at the band room. Doors locked on juvenile players.
Power of 68 Hunter Street writes: Citizens will be surprised to know that the local council has granted the Richmond City Band the sole right to use the band room to the exclusion of the local juvenile band. The latter comprises about 60 members under the able tuition of Mister Dyamond, whose laudable efforts on behalf of the boys are to be highly commended. As a result of this highhanded attitude on the part of the council, the boys are left without a suitable room in which to practice. In view of the fact that the Richmond Council band seldom appears in public with its full complement of players, it generally has to obtain the services of players from other bands to replace its own absentees, and only a few of its members regularly attend practice, it is difficult to understand why the council should inflict such a glaring injustice upon an institution which it should be the first to encourage. It behooves the citizens of Richmond who are interested in the juvenile ban to do all in their power to have the embargo removed."
Now there was a lot more letters about this. Now from what I've kind of pieced together, and I'm obviously on the side of the boys' band. This unashamedly, I think they were in the right. I think that the guy who was running the senior band was slagging off the junior band. Boys in the junior band said, 'Right, we're not coming. We're not gonna join your band because you've been slagging us off.' And then the senior band said, 'Well, fine. You can't use our band room anymore.' That's what I think happened.
Adam: A friend of mine who wonderful historian, a guy called Jeremy de Kourt, he's the the Victorian Bands League's official historian.
Penny: He has blog posts on pretty much every aspect of bands.
Adam: There's a whole, like, I think, Facebook site devoted to bandstands in country towns.
Penny: Yep.
Adam: He's a lovely guy and was so generous in in sharing when when I first sort of started looking at starting this and asking for a historical understanding. He sent me a a letter that was to the subscribers of Richmond City Band. Another band was do not give money to these because they're trying to pretend that they're us, and they're not really. They're our competition.
Penny: So, there was a lot of competition. There was also competition for the funding from the council as well cos they would kind of pay these bands, give them some money. Yeah. But then sometimes they were like, well, you can't just keep starting new bands. We can't fund you all.
Christina: Stick with your original band.
Adam: Yeah well, I'd take council subsidy of 1 band at the moment.
Penny: Yeah. Exactly. If you're listening. Yarra Council.
So is this common now? Like, what happens? Are you competing for the best players?
Adam: The band scene is obviously it it's a dying.
Penny: It's not.
Adam: It's it's not a dying industry. It's a wonderful, wonderful community. There are some just some wonderful people, but just as musical interests diversify, like, with the the concert bands taking over schools, schools are very are not integrating with brass bands the way that they used to. And it's a competition for players in that respect. And even then within schools, you got kids are generally oversubscribed with organized activity.
Everyone wants kids, especially talented kids. Talented. There's that word.
Penny: Unboundried kids.
Adam: Unboundried kids. No.
Christina: I like kids with boundaries.
Adam: Don't we all. The competition for kids, bright kids to be a part of your program is just, you know. And the reason that these bands always flourished in low low sociocultural areas. I mean, Richmond was struggle town.
Penny: It absolutely was.
Adam: At the time when this was a thing, kids didn't have other activities to do.The uptake is I I don't think people look at it and go, this is a brass band program. This is just a music program, and the the design and the fact that it's it's been taken to so so enthusiastically by by the community is it's obvious that there's a big hunger for quality music education in state schools. And and that's not something that's well served by the existing structures of schools. So, it needs people to come in and be creative, and that's what I've done or I've tried to do.
Penny: Yeah. So, it's just really lucky to have individuals.
Adam: Well, look, I mean, if you said to every state school that they have to start an instrumental music program, you'd have a whole lot of really mediocre programs. Part of what I'm doing with this, I'm trying to help show the brass band community what can be done in state schools. And I I'm very happy to share my resources, very happy to share my learnings with anyone else that wants this sort of I'm really hopeful that the teacher, Naomi, that I've got on teaching is gonna go and start her own program somewhere someday. Since I've been there, I've had approaches from other schools to say, can you come and start something in in our school as well?
Penny: Busy, so you can't.
Adam: Well, no. I can't, but
Penny: I'm just getting a bit protective now.
Adam: There's no reason to say that other people can't do what I've done. I have a quite a particular set of skills that makes life easier for me to do that, but at the same time, I'm building resources.
Penny: Taking down the boundaries of other people to do the same thing.
Adam: Hopefully. I won't say for the band for the brass band community to survive, they have to do this, but there is a need for for to to make the progression into that sort of sphere. I mean, if you say brass band to your average person, it does evoke an image of very old men in in slightly tacky uniforms playing playing oom-pah stuff.
Christina: Yeah. Yeah.
Adam: And I've gotta say, like, that was my understanding of it as well. Like I say, I didn't play in one until I was in my mid twenties because the few people that I knew that playing brass bands didn't ever invite me to come. Do you know what I mean?
Like, there's no there's no stepping stone to get into that world. And now that I've been in there, some of the, like, some of the playing that I do is as challenging as anything I've ever done in my life. Like, the music that I'm preparing for for next year's nationals at the moment, I'm gonna have to work my ass off. And it really pushes me to the end. Like, as a tuba player, I could go and sit in a symphony orchestra and play 10 bars and then sit down and not do anything for 15 minutes because that's how orchestral tuba playing works, or I could really push myself to the end, to the extent of my abilities, and really challenge myself.
Penny: What would you say has been like the highlight of your own playing career? Is there a particular thing that I've heard that you were involved in that someone would like you to mention.
Adam: Yes. Yes. I was in the Olympics opening ceremony at Sydney in 2000.
Christina: That's very exciting.
Adam: In a 2,000 piece marching band.
Penny: And no one could you did not stand out, I hope.
Adam: No.
Penny: Good. Good. That's what we wanted.
But apart from that, is there anything else that you would
Adam: Oh, look. I've done so many varied different completely random things as a musician. I've been fortunate enough to win the national title, 4 times now with A-grade bands that there's a the famous trophy. It's it's called the fire that's the fireman's helmet.
Christina: Okay.
Adam: Donated by the fire the fire brigade band. Big silver fireman's helmet on a
Penny: Oh, cool.
Adam: On a big plank of wood with lots of old bands' names on it. So that's always always really rewarding to play in the bands that are able to do that. I've played in numerous big bands, jazz ensembles, performed I did the dawn service at Gallipoli when I was with the military. A, military tattoo for the Sultan of Brunei's birthday. A brass quintet a playing in a brass quintet at a dinner for Hu Jintao, at the APEC conference.
Penny: Yeah.
Adam: Having, you know, Bob Hawkes singing singing along
Penny: He'd love it, wouldn't he? Bloody love it.
Adam: And then the, probably the more amusing part of what I do is some of the corporate entertainment where I dress up in silly costumes and run around public events playing playing tuba. So I've got some entertaining photos of me dressed as a Christmas tree or a turkey or Elvis.
Christina: Yeah nice.
Penny: Getting paid.
Adam: Well, look, you know?
Penny: That's the corporate gig.
Adam: Look, it's so much fun. I love doing those sorts of things. Because that's a just a different skill again because there's no printed music. It's like, can you play this song? And we say, 'what do you wanna hear? We'll play anything.' And so we just have to make it up and work it out in your own head.
Penny: I meant to ask you, Christina. What does your school do in terms of musical program?
Adam: Not dress up as Christmas trees?
Christina: Not an awful lot. So, primary recorders. Secondary, there is an orchestra. And there yeah there's a stream kids can elect into to do sort of specialize in music, but I think that's fairly broad.
I guess within that program, they can elect to have sort of 1 on 1 tuition in an instrument of their choice. And then if it's an instrument that fits within a band, orchestra, that's how they sort of find their feet. But I guess we're stronger probably with more vocal stuff, but there there is a lot of requests from families about particularly in primary, what are we gonna do in terms of kids having access to instruments. And it is it is a big demand.
Penny: Yeah and I guess when there's not an Adam being one of the parents.
Christina: Absolutely.
Penny: More difficult.
Christina: Yeah. You know, we we've looked into a few options, but none of it's really come up how we would like it to. And because we're such a big school, it would be a huge undertaking. Like, you know, there's 2,700 kids, 900 in the primary. So it it's a big, big deal.
Penny: I've got one more article to read. It does continue on with that controversy. It's from the Richmond Guardian from 5th April 1919, and it says
"The dispute with the senior band drags on. A letter from a firm of solicitors in the city has been received declaring that if the boys' band continued to practice in the band room at Gleadell Street, they would be regarded as trespassers.
Not much attention apparently was paid to the letter. The boys were at full blast on Monday night when in stepped Ben Hall!"
Exclamation mark.
"He is the secretary of the Richmond City Band. He asked conductor Dyamond if the boys band intended to remain in the band room and was referred by conductor Dyamond to the boys band committee. Nothing further happened that night.
The next scene in this farcical feud is likely to be staged at the police court. An application to secure an injunction restraining the boys' band from trespassing.
Adam: Imagine Mister Dyamond would have an inside running on that police department.
Penny: I feel like I don't know that I'd wanna take Dyamond to court. I think he'll be alright. Then what happened is in 1926, the band room burnt down. So now no one can play in it.
Christina: Well, that sounds like a conspiracy in and of itself.
Penny: It does.
Adam: I think they should rebuild the band room, and Richmond Youth Brass Band can use it.
Christina: That'd be great.
Penny: The split with the boys' band and the senior band remained. And so in the end, the boys' band changed their name to the Richmond District Brass Band.
Adam: Maybe that's the band that was the in competition.
Penny: The last article I found them was in 1928, and then it petered out. I think the Richmond City band went kept going a bit longer than that.
Adam: I'm not sure that much happened after the band room burnt down.
Penny: How far should we think ahead? Another I mean, 100 years is a bit far.
Christina: I don't know. It rounds it off nicely.
Penny: Let's go 10 and then 50 years. What's your vision for brass bands in Richmond?
Adam: Oh, brass bands in Richmond, look.
Penny: Oh, should it never change? It's just always going strong.
Adam: I I focus year to year at the moment, both the youth the community youth band and the school band program to be in a position that if I needed to leave, then someone else would. It would be established enough that someone could come in and take over. So that means building up the resources, building up the structures, building up the sort of patterns and and habits so that if I needed to go, if I, you know, go hit by a bus tomorrow, that it wouldn't just be a room full of unused gear. Because, I mean, the hardest thing is starting. I'll be honest, this is where my frustrations with, say, the funding from the council and stuff comes in is the hardest thing is starting.
It's so hard to get that first amount of money to get some uniforms and to get some and we we've got basic polo shirts. We don't need any more than that, but to get money for that was hard enough, and then to build up a music library, I'm writing stuff myself, you know. To get those first instruments not having to play on, you know, I mean, I haven't got to the point where I've had to plan upturn, you know, sauce bins, but it's not far off, you know. And and without the very generous support I've had from private individuals of of donating their old gear, and it wouldn't have got off the ground at all. So the hardest thing is starting these things. And once those processes are there, once those resources are there, it enables someone else to to sort of pick up from where I've left off.
I don't plan on leaving it off anytime soon.
Penny: Dyamond kept going for, like, 50 years.
Christina: No pressure.
Adam: Well, no. Yeah. But I love what I do. Every every new beginner band every year is an absolute joy.
Penny: It is so cute, and it's become, I think, such a social thing for the kids as well. I don't think they have any idea of brass bands being an old man's thing. It's a young person's thing.
Adam: No.
Penny: It's what are their friends doing.
Adam: That's exactly it. And, you know, there are still archery societies, and there are still, you know. Just becomes because something superseded doesn't mean it's worthless. And watching watching someone be a great DJ is just not the same as watching a group of people make music together.
Penny: And they love being part of something bigger than themselves. You could hear the excitement at the concert. Particularly they played this las song where they played 'Hey Jude'.
Adam: It was it was a nice vibe to finish the night. I was happy with that, the way that came off.
Penny: Well I would say that it the the Richmond bands are really adding lustre to Richmond. They're bringing fame to the district. Really hope it keeps going.
Christina: Yeah thankyou, that was amazing.
Penny: Don't poach him. He's not available.
Christina: I was not trying to poach but I was listening very intently and plotting and scheming in my head.
Adam: If I'm able to help anyone do this in their area, I'm very happy. There's a there's a number of people around the country that are doing. One of the great things about that, the social media thing, is the ability to connect and see other people doing this stuff. And, and you see, like, there's a big movement in Africa for villages to have bands. So a lot of secondhand older instruments get, refurbished and sent off to Kenya and places like that. And you see these, you know, these the little village bands.
You can start bands from scratch, and they can sound amazing after not that much time and building places where, like, every kid should do something. Every kid's gotta have something that I belong to that's not school. They need to be part of a club. They need to be part of a tribe.
I don't care whether that's brass bands or whether it's a swimming club or scouts or or footy club or whatever it is. Everyone's gotta have something, and and not everyone is, we're a very sports centric society, and not everyone's finds their feet on the sports field. Not not everyone finds a spiritual home there, and we are a spiritual home for a great number of people. And the more opportunities there are for that sort of thing in the community, the better, I think.
Christina: Thanks so much.
Penny: Thanks so much. That was so great.
1:12:58 Penny: Now we’re going to talk to current Richmond Intermediate Brass Band member, Scarlett O’Heeler.
(jaunty piano music soprano part)
Penny: So welcome, Scarlett. We've got you here today to talk about your experience in the Brass Band.
So what made you initially want to join the Brass Band?
Scarlett: I was at an appointment this day, so I missed out on it. So it was first band lesson and my friends were in it. So I really wanted to join but I missed the first lesson. You can still join in if you missed the first lesson. The first lesson is basically just knowing how to hold your instrument and stuff.
Penny: Okay. And so what instrument do you play?
Scarlett: I play the baritone horn.
Penny: And how did you choose which instrument you wanted to play?
Scarlett: Well, there's barely any instruments left.
Penny: Right.
Scarlett: There was a trombone, a baritone, and the cornet. I could not play the cornet. There was no sound coming out of it.
When I played the baritone (clapping sound). Trombone.
Penny: Not so good? Mid?
Scarlett: Baritone.
Penny: That was your sweet spot. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. And the leader of the band, the band master is Adam, and what's he like as a teacher?
Scarlett: He's really good. Like, if you're there once was this time where 2 kids, 2 boys at the 2nd row of cornets were being really really really silly especially one of them.
Penny: Okay.
Scarlett: And he had to raise his voice and then they just started keep on being silly. And then he almost had to get one of them to, like, have a break and go out. But that didn't happen.
Penny: Oh, really? So people are usually pretty well behaved. I mean, I imagine it's very it can be very loud with everyone playing the instrument.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Penny: So how does Adam get everyone to be quiet and listen?
(clicking sound)
Penny: He clicks?
Scarlett: Oi. Oi, guys. That's how he does it.
Penny: And people pretty respond pretty well to that.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Penny: Oh, that's good.
As you know, I've really enjoyed some of your performances in 2023, particularly at the Collingwood Town Hall.
Scarlett: Oh, that was the biggest one. That was like, over 400 people there, maybe.
Penny: And what did that feel like to play in that big hall?
Scarlett: I don't really get nerves.
Penny: Even playing for that many people?
Scarlett: Oh, yeah. And at the last bit, intermediate band was playing Hey Jude, and then Brass Band came on at the 'nah nah nah nah nah' bit bit and then intermediate band and then rookie band that was us. And while everybody was in the hallway going up to the stage, we knew the people in the audience could see us, but we were all just singing. 'Nah, nah nah, nah nah nah nah'.
Penny: It was such a great finale to the concert.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Penny: And you also played a solo earlier in the year, didn't you? Everyone in Rookie Band, even though you guys have been playing for less than a year, you did a concert where you played a solo. You played Roar by Katy Perry.
Scarlett: Yeah. Like, honestly, I just picked the first song I heard him say.
Penny: Oh, really?
Scarlett: Yeah, I don't even like Roar that much. I just picked the first song he said.
Penny: Oh, fantastic. I thought you know, I think that's quite a hard song to play.
Scarlett: The hardest thing is connected c to f at the very end.
Penny: So what do you reckon for other kids? Should they play in a brass band? Would you recommend it?
Scarlett: Well, if your kindergarten kid is looking for school to go to, I do recommend Richmond West. But they can't join band until they're in grade 2.
Penny: You've got to be in grade 2. Yeah. Well, that's fair enough. A lot of the instruments will be too too big for the beginners.
Scarlett: And that could be a bit silly.
Penny: Yep. You gotta be mature enough. You gotta be ready.
Scarlett: Especially if you're playing percussion.
Penny: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Scarlett, for coming in and talking to us about it. It's great to hear from one of the actual students of of the Richmond West Brass Band. And maybe in a 100 years, someone will listen to this podcast and think about, oh, this historical event.
Scarlett: Yeah. Maybe that will happen. And then I'll make half flying cars.
Penny: Yeah. It's gonna be great.
(baritone horn plays last few bars of Roar by Katy Perry)
Next time on In Those Days we discuss the development of Infant Welfare Centres in Richmond with proper historian Carla Pascoe-Leahy.
Carla: That change of name from infant welfare to maternal child health signifies something really important, that it's not just actually keeping a baby alive. They also need to look after the mother.
Penny: I also talk to my friends Vaya and Jo and we compare our experiences of maternal child health centres with the ones in the olden days.
Penny: And they didn't wanna call it a clinic.
Vaya: Okay.
Penny: And I read one article. She suggested 'depot'.
Vaya: Oh, I love depot.
Penny: The baby health depot.
Jo: One stop shop.
Penny: Yeah. Exactly.
Vaya: I think it's not too late to rebrand.
1:18:37 (jaunty piano music)
(clip clopping sound)