Gathering Fife’s top brass

This year’s East Neuk Festival will be paying a special tribute to generations of Fife coal miners and their brass bands. Michael Alexander spoke to the event’s lead performer John Wallace

Renowned Fife-born musician John Wallace is in his garden practising his trumpet when The Courier calls. It’s partly because of the glorious weather that he has gone outside to rehearse his instrument which, when fitted with a practice mute, “makes it sound like a wee sparrow”.

Born in Methilhill, John, 68, moved to what was then the new town of Glenrothes with his family in 1955 when he was six.

Generations of his family were employed in the mining and coal industries and also played in the brass bands associated with them.

And now he is preparing to go back to his roots when he leads De Profundis – the East Neuk Festival’s “Big Project” for 2017.

It will pay a special tribute to the past generations of Fife miners whose working days were spent in terrible and hazardous conditions but whose leisure time was playing beautiful music together in brass bands.

The event, in the Bowhouse, Anstruther, on July 1 will feature around 60 brass players, including the highly regarded Tullis Russell Mills Bands and The Wallace Collection, led by John himself.

“I’m a Fifer through and through and I’m so excited about the possibilities De Profundis gives to explore Fife’s fabulous stories and myths,” he said.

“John Miller (trumpet/flugel/cornet player in The Wallace Collection) and I started playing with the Tullis Russell Mills Band aged seven – and in our imaginations we’ve never left.

“Putting The Wallace Collection together with Tullis in a once-in- lifetime immersive performance in a barn in the middle of the East Neuk – where our entire families came to cross the River Leven to join the industrial revolution on the other side – is a dream come true for both of us.”

John himself became a member of the Tullis Russell Mills Band after his father brought home a cornet, which he learned to play by ear.

He joined the Coaltown of Balgonie Prize Silver Band before Albert Cochrane, his music teacher at Buckhaven High School, encouraged him to join the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, playing the Haydn Trumpet Concerto on a European tour aged 15. John went on to study music at King’s College, Cambridge and then studied trumpet and composition as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music and York University.

In 1974 he joined the London Symphony Orchestra and was then principal trumpet of The Philarmonia from 1976 to 1995.

After touring the world with The Wallace Collection, he returned to Scotland in 2002 – becoming the first Scot to become principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

John explained that he and East Neuk Festival artistic director Svend McEwan-Brown are devising De Profundis as a performance that will draw on the Gaelic Psalm traditions of the Western Isles and other source material.

As with previous East Neuk Festival projects such as this, the venue will be atmospherically staged and lit for a promenade audience.

John, who performed with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, said he was first inspired by the stark contrast between the darkness and danger of the mines and the beauty of the sound of a pit band in full flow.

“The bands originally sprang from the middle of the 19th Century when people came from the countryside into towns and big factories,” he explained.

“They had a little bit of disposable income and more leisure time. They banded together to form bands who played dances and contests.

“In 1898 there were 30,000 brass bands in the UK. Now there are around 500.

“They started to decline in 1964 when more electric guitars started to be sold. Everyone then wanted to be in a group.”

John noted that Fife’s mines had long since closed but the bands lived on.

“The industry has gone but the bands are still there,” he said.

“You cannot kill peoples’ culture.” malexander@thecourier.co.uk The East Neuk Festival runs from June 28 to July 2. De Profundis takes place on July 1 at 6pm. www. eastneukfestival.com

Right, Fife-born musician John Wallace. Left, from top: the Tullis Russell Mills Band on the steps of the Albert Hall in 1964 – with John in the centre, back row – and below; when the band were Scottish champions in 1952, featuring his father and uncle.