Since 2016, Martin Heartfield has run a series of one day courses for young brass players as part of his NEMBBA Youth Band initiative. Examples of previous courses can be found on Facebook® at https://www.facebook.com/NEMBBAYB.

With the reduced provision of music within schools, these courses do provide a unique opportunity for our young players to spend a day playing music with their peers and to receive some tuition from some of our top brass players.

Sadly, we had to cancel our youth band course last year, due to the low number of participants after years (pre-Covid) in which we attracted around 40 to 50 young players. Martin and NEMBBA are willing to try to run a course again this year, but we wish to first establish what support we have for this initiative from our local bands. The NEMBBA Youth Band is open to any young brass player (grade 3 standard or above) regardless of whether your band is a member of NEMBBA (the course is also open to young players not yet attached to any brass band). NEMBBA are willing to subsidise the cost of multiple players from the same family.

Please will you let me know if you have any young players in your band who would be interested in attending one of these courses. If we have sufficient interest, Martin will arrange one or more courses for later in the year.