This article appeared in British Bandsman on 2nd August 2008
Young Scots prove great ambassadors in Japan
By Graham Fraser
When friends and colleagues ask me where I went on holiday this year, they are surprised to learn that I spent two weeks in Japan with the National Youth Brass Band of Scotland (NYBBS). It is a rare occurrence for a youth band to undertake a concert tour on the other side of the planet, but that is exactly what 71 young brass players did with the NYBBS. Before the band travelled to Japan at the beginning of July, it gave a concert at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, joined by guest soloist, Steven Mead, who went on to accompany the band on tour. After a very positive performance, the NYBBS set out on its two-week journey, which would take the young musicians across the country, from Yokohama, Osaka and Kyoto to Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Hamamatsu and Tokyo.
The first day of the tour was marred by a problem familiar to all travelling musicians - callous baggage handlers. After a 15-hour flight across the globe, the band arrived in Narita airport on the outskirts of Tokyo to discover that 34 suitcases were missing, along with a BBb bass. Several members of the NYBBS also found their instruments to be damaged.
Robert Fraser was particularly unfortunate to find both his instrument and his suitcase missing and when his bass turned up the following night, it had a ten-inch dent in it. Nevertheless, despite the best efforts of BMI and Korean Air, the band remained in good spirits. Indeed, the following day, it took part in one of the most surreal concerts in its 50-year history.
The scene was the Seitoku University, an all-girls establishment in Chiba, Greater Tokyo. Many of the 1,500 people who came to the concert were students at the school, but these young girls were not there by choice, as their attendance was required as part of their studies. The concert, however, will live in the memory thanks to a certain 2nd trombone player with the band. Douglas MacKillop, from the small village of Kilmacolm in Inverclyde, was also the piper in Highland Cathedral, the band’s encore item and when he strolled down the steps of the Seitoku University concert hall in full pipe band regalia, slightly bored Japanese teenagers, forced to attend a lecture at 7.00pm, were suddenly whipped into a frenzy.
After rapturous applause to end the concert, young Mr MacKillop, and several other NYBBS members, spent the next half-hour signing autographs and posing for photos. Douglas had to be virtually dragged on the bus, before his new Japanese fan base got its way and he looked quite shaken at the end of it all. Mind you, he had just received a marriage proposal from a particularly enthusiastic fan! The next day, 9 July, was in many ways even better. The band joined up with the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music in a massed band of over 120 musicians.
The Minato Mirai Hall in Yokohama was filled to capacity with 2,100 in the audience, and the NYBBS excelled before being joined by the Japanese musicians to give particularly loud accounts of Light Cavalry, Cornet Carillon, The Great Gate of Kiev and New Colonial.
At the end of that second concert, the players were on cloud nine, but the reality of the Japan tour then hit home. While audiences for the remaining five concerts were enthusiastic, their numbers fell drastically. Several hundred people still attended each performance, but the concerts were taking place in some of Japan’s premier venues and the numbers of empty chairs were sadly evident. Nevertheless, this did not deter the musicians, and Douglas MacKillop was still breaking the hearts of innumerable Japanese girls.
At the half-way point in the tour, the band performed with Grest Brass Band in Kyoto. After an afternoon concert, the bands joined together for a rather ‘different’ Burns Supper. As most readers will be aware, Burns suppers take place in January across Scotland and the rest of the world, with the host of each event toasting the haggis, which is then ‘stabbed’ before being served to the guests. The NYBBS Japanese Burns Supper, however, took place in July, with Course Director, Neil Cross, toasting some sushi! After the Scots had the opportunity to taste some Japanese delicacies, Harry Watson, a house staff member for several years, recited the entire eight minutes of the famous poem, Tam O’ Shanter.
The NYBBS Staff Band then treated its captive audience to some Scottish classics, including the indelible Skirl, before the Japanese and Scots joined together for a ceilidh. The evening was one of the highlights of Steven Mead’s YouTube video blogs, in which he captured many special moments on camera before posting them on the popular website. The videos didn’t just provide an account of the tour for parents and NYBBS fans back home, but they will also be treasured by band members for years to come.
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For many viewers, Steven’s best compilation came on 14 July, the day that the band visited the Peace Memorial at Hiroshima - the site of the first use of an atomic bomb. The beautiful memorial still bears the scars of that terrible event and the band received a moving talk from survivor, Miyoko Matsubara, before walking around the site and its associated museum. One member of the trip who was particularly moved was Stewart Brynes, who has just qualified in Edinburgh as a history teacher. The Whitburn percussionist said: “I never thought I would have the opportunity to visit Hiroshima. No one can realise the extent of the devastation until you see it for yourself, but the visit really put things into perspective for me and, speaking as a history teacher, it was an unforgettable experience.”
A few days later, the players enjoyed themselves at the Fujikyu Highland Theme Park. Several members were brave enough for a ride on Fujiyama – the world’s tallest roller coaster - before taking a trip on the Ferris wheel for a spectacular view of Mount Fuji. Another attraction that we experienced was the Japanese bullet train. For a nation that relies on First ScotRail for intercity transport, it was little wonder that the band was in awe at the Japanese service. Indeed, if a bullet train is late by a few minutes, it makes the national news! Such a concept is simply alien to a bunch of sunburnt Scotsmen.
The final concert of the tour took place on July 18 in the beautiful Shinjuku Bunka Centre in Toyko. In this, the band’s seventh performance of its visit to Japan, the players excelled, performing NYBBS favourites including Alan Fernie’s Alba, Jupiter from The Planets and Paul Lovatt Cooper’s Vitae Aeternum, bringing the tour to a fitting close. For 14 members of the band, this writer included, the concert signalled the end of their NYBBS careers, so a tinge of sadness was felt by all, but what better way to end their time with Scotland’s national youth band than a concert in the Japanese capital?
So now, with all the players safely back home, what reflections can be made from the NYBBS tour of Japan? Along with Neil Cross, Shoko Morimoto, a baritone player with Parc and Dare Band in Wales, was at the forefront of the tour’s organisation. She told BB: “It was an amazing experience and a great pleasure for me to be involved with this project, which brought together Japan and the UK. I couldn’t do this job without all the support I had from my family, friends and tutors, and I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone. I am sure that the audiences and all the Japanese people who were involved with this tour greatly appreciated the superb performances and enthusiasm of the NYBBS.”
Shoko is at the forefront of another project, which will see a Japanese band perform in the UK, helping to organise a concert between the Senzoku Gakuen and her own Parc and Dare Band on 9 August. The Japanese outfit will travel to Swansea to join the International Brass Band Summer School before giving a charity concert for the Japanese School in Wales, along with Parc and Dare. The concert, which will be conducted by Richard Evans and Robert Childs, will take place at Llandaff Cathedral.
Neil Cross is now looking to the next step for the NYBBS: “The tour of Japan will be remembered by all those who had the opportunity to be a part of it. Both musically and culturally, it will be something we will never forget. Everyone who helped organise the trip was slightly disappointed with the lack of support we received from the big financial and cultural institutions back home, as several household names were simply not interested in supporting Scotland’s premier youth band in this endeavour, so the real work starts now. The NYBBS tour of Japan cost a lot of money, so everyone who has a relationship with the band will need to come together and think of ways to raise a lot of cash.”
18-year-old euphonium player, Katy Anderson, added her own thoughts on the trip: “The tour was undoubtedly the trip of a lifetime. It was amazing to visit such a different culture and get the opportunity to play at such fabulous concert halls. The highlights for me had to be the visit to Hiroshima, which was a fascinating and moving experience, and the Burns Supper, at which we had our first taste of sushi and made some great friendships with Grest Brass Band.”
The trip even left a deep impression on a seasoned international performer like Steven Mead, who commented: “The NYBBS Japan tour is something that the young people in the band will never forget. The concert venues were superb and the acoustics of each really showed off the rich sound of this band. As you know, during the time in Japan I recorded daily video diaries, and it was an excellent chance for me to create something that the boys and girls in the band can look back to once the immediate memory has diminished. I was really pleased how they appreciated so many facets of the Japanese way of doing things. Clearly they were all impressed with the way the country works, how clean it was, how respectful all the people are and how precise the timing of everything is. It made coming back to the UK even more difficult. Despite an initial reticence, the band and all the staff even seemed to embrace Japanese cuisine, which is quite delicious (although, at its worst, it’s a little strange!). Steven added: “They accompanied my solos extremely well and I met many hundreds of euphonium players backstage after the concerts, as well as many conductors and players from newly-formed brass bands. I don’t think we should be under any illusion – the number of brass bands in Japan is still a tiny fraction of the number of wind bands there, but I’m sure that the concerts by the NYBBS will prove to be a really strong shot in the arm for this emerging band movement, and correspondence I’ve had from Japan since the tour confirms this. I would like to say a big thank you to our sponsors, in particular the Scottish Amateur Music Association, Besson and the Royal Northern College of Music, the latter two of which supported my visit entirely. I’d also like to say a final thank you to the players, whose energy during long days and nights rarely diminished, playing to a consistently high standard throughout gruelling schedule, so they can come back with their heads held high that they were great ambassadors for Scotland and for brass bands.”
The last word must go to ‘Mr NYBBS’ – Richard Evans: “The tour was an amazing event, both historically and culturally, and all of our players in NYBBS now have Japanese friends thanks to this. The players were wonderful ambassadors for Scotland and the wider brass band fraternity and I will never forget the tour for the rest of my life.”
Reproduced by kind permission of British Bandsman |
