WCCP Ruishton Play Day
2nd March 2025
A goodly group of WCCP Members met on a sunny Sunday to play together, including one person completely new to the instrument. And we did play: it was a day of playing without any talks on concertina-related matters.
The theme for the day was ‘the written word’ and individual members regaled us with tunes and songs related to poems and even financial documents! These included the Irish jig ‘The £42 cheque’, the tune ‘Lindisfarne’ (Gospels), ‘Who Wrote the Book of Love?’, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ (a James Herriott reference) and tunes from Jane Austin dramatisations, amongst many others. It is not at all obligatory to play or teach a tune but these play days exist to offer that chance in the most supportive environment possible.
Some of these were done as ad hoc groups, which is always a fun thing to do, with just an hour’s guidance from the originator.
We also played some pre-prepped tunes from our own library collections, including renaissance dances and three Australian ‘bush dance’ tunes that were collated by our own Iris Bishop. One of our attendees had already learnt them with her in 2002!
In our ‘flexible’ last hour we played some simple canons. Concertinas ‘en masse’ make a lovely, uniform, pure, rich sound when playing canons – probably as close to playing a dry-tuned church organ as you can get.
Our next meeting is on Sunday 18th May (note the date) at 11 a.m., at Ruishton Village Hall, TA3 5JD. All WCCP Members or concertina-curious non-members are very welcome.
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