Band celebrates a century of sounds

A BALLARAT band is celebrating more than one hundred years of music with a performance this month.

The Ballarat Memorial Concert Band is one of Ballarat’s oldest musical groups and will be recognising the achievement with a cabaret night featuring music from the 1920s until today on Saturday, 13 May.

The group was formed in 1920 to give soldiers who returned from war something to get involved in and is now an open all ages band.

“We are a community band and being able to meet and enjoy playing together again is now a privilege and joy,” said president Vince McDonald.

“This concert is meant to be fun, it’s not a traditional sit-down concert.”

The celebrations were delayed following the COVID pandemic, but Mr McDonald said he is looking forward to the event which is also a fundraiser for the group as it receives no ongoing money from government.

“This is our first major concert of our own since COVID where we are able to present our own work in our own way and that’s very exciting for us,” said Mr McDonald.

“Music is a very different thing.

“A lot of other arts are representative of real-world things whereas music is its own thing and all cultures in time have been known to express themselves with music.”

Mr McDonald said he hopes the band will still be playing music in another 100 years.

“I think the desires of people will still be there, so I strongly suspect we’ll be playing different versions of our instruments, but I hope the same opportunities to local community members are still made available,” he said.

The band performs regularly in Ballarat at events like the Begonia and Ballarat Heritage festivals with members ranging from 12 to those in their senior years.

The concert will be held at the Ballarat Specialist School farm campus at 7pm and for tickets visit trybooking.com/CGYFS.