Past Events
BBC Elstree Concert Band 1986 - Present Day
The BBC Elstree Concert Band was founded by flautist Ian Marshall and gave its first public concert at the BBC’s Elstree Studios in July 1986. The audience was a modest one but included, crucially, the Mayor of Elstree and Borehamwood and the Town Council’s Entertainments Officer. Their support over subsequent years has been vital to the band’s development. Indeed, Elstree and Borehamwood remains very much the band’s spiritual home, where it regularly gives concerts.
The continued development of the band into the versatile and entertaining ensemble you will hear today is down to the inspirational and energetic leadership of two people: the founding Musical Director, Mike Crisp, and the current Musical Director, Andrew Morley.
Mike Crisp was a pillar of the BBC’s TV Training Department and composer of a considerable amount of music for television programmes. He assumed the responsibilities of Musical Director from a very early stage and continued for many wonderful years until his departure for pastures new in France. His successor, Andrew Morley, has continued to take the band from strength to strength, pushing players to new levels with great exuberance!
Over the thirty plus years of the band’s existence, it has played at a wide range of venues in and around London, including the Elstree and Maida Vale Studios, St James’s Church Piccadilly, The Proms at St Jude’s in Hampstead Garden Suburb, Millfield Theatre, Allum Hall, Dorchester and Westminster Abbeys. The ensemble has also given concerts further afield in Belgium, Germany and France.
The band’s performances have been broadcast nationally as well as globally through the BBC World Service. The band provided the music for a major BBC 1 documentary and has made several recordings, the most recent of which was for a Radio 3 programme on the music of Charles Ives, as part of the “Discovering Music” series. The group has also given concerts in aid of The Voice of the Listener Trust, the North London Hospice, St Luke’s Hospice and several other charitable organisations.