Drogheda Brass Band annual Christmas concert
DROGHEDA Brass Band has teamed up with Clogherhead RNLI for its annual Christmas concert this year, to be held at the Droichead Arts Centre on Wednesday December 13th at 8pm.
The concert will be centred around Simon Dobson’s fantastic work Penlee, based on the December 1981 lifeboat disaster off the coast of Cornwall which claimed the lives of 16 people, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.
In May 2011, Dobson’s Penlee was voted in at number 106 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame. It was the highest new entry of any genre and Dobson was the seventh-highest living composer in the 300-strong list. This work has been used worldwide as a test piece in brass band competitions; it was the set work for the Swiss national finals and the North American championships.
Indeed, reigning Irish brass band champions Drogheda Brass Band played Penlee as their piece of own choice to the National Band Championships in May 2012. The band has won nine of the last 11 available titles at this contest.
Clogherhead RNLI launched the station’s €150,000 Shannon lifeboat appeal on the final day of the Drogheda National Maritime Festival last year.
The Shannon is the latest class of all-weather lifeboat in the RNLI fleet and the most technologically advanced. It is also the first class of RNLI lifeboat to be named after an Irish river, recognition of the role carried out by lifeboat volunteers in Ireland over the last 190 years.
Tickets for the concert are €8, which includes a contribution towards the fundraising campaign. Bookings at www.droichead.com or call 041-9833946.