Citizens’ band returns to Farewell Spit
The Takaka Citizens’ Band performing “in the open air surrounded by big macrocarpas”. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
A brass band playing outside the first assistant’s house at Farewell Spit Lighthouse was the last thing tourists who ventured out there last Saturday might have expected.
At first they just ogled and gazed, but one by one they all sat down on the grass to fully appreciate the hour-long performance by the Takaka Citizens’ Band.
The band was using the social outing with family members as a good opportunity to polish up a few Christmas tunes, plus some old favourites like Victoria Rifles, Fraternity, Moonlighter and Invercargill. And, as one tourist commented, “appreciate just how good the music sounded in the open arena surrounded by big macrocarpas.”
It’s not the first time the Takaka Citizens’ Band has ventured out with all their instruments to play at the very farthest reach of their domain. Fifteen years ago, Saturday’s driver Paddy Gillooly took them out in his Farewell Spit Tours bus to do the very same thing.
Even before the bus left Tasman Street last weekend, cornet-playing Adam Bickley was filling the town’s main street with his refrains. He recalls the trip 15 years ago.
“We might have spent too long in the Collingwood Tavern on the way out there, but it was another excellent outing simply because we’ve always got on so well and have such a common interest in making music.”
The band used to travel to the countryside brass pipe festivals, but these have seen a demise in recent times. Now the band has social outings to locations where they give an impromptu public performance. In recent years they’ve visited not only Farewell Spit but Tapawera, Reefton and Portage.
In Golden Bay they are more known for their professionally presented turnouts at Takaka’s Christmas and ANZAC Day Parades and Show Day, not to forget the neighbourhood Christmas carols and serious ongoing tuition for aspiring and musically gifted young people.
Twelve-year-old Levi Lindsay, playing an E-flat horn, is the latest to earn the band uniform, which he proudly wore out to Farewell Spit last weekend. The longest-serving member on the trip was E-flat bass–player Rex Page, who signed up at age 10 and last year received a QSM in recognition of his 75 years’ service to the band.
The band was founded in 1881 and its first conductor was George Gilbert, who held that position for 20 years before handing it over to “Barty” Paine in 1901. It was under the 1910-1918 presidency of highly-esteemed local surgeon Dr Robert Noble Adams that the band became an incorporated society and began issuing uniforms. The conductor during this period was Vern Bensemann. Conducting the band today is Joanne Berkahn, serving her second term in that position.
During WWI, the band lost many players as they were recruited one by one into the armed forces. There are currently 15 instrument-playing members, which is a tad short-staffed considering numbers hit 25 in recent years.
Around the end of November, the band will fill the bus and tour the local area for the first of their neighbourhood carol services, which will keep up them occupied for two evenings a week until Christmas. Band member Willa Visker says any students or young people in particular who would like to accompany them as carol singers should ring her on 525 9775.
Gerard Hindmarsh
