Moving to Woodley put the trend of using worship songs (rather than hymns) into sudden reverse, as we found ourselves in a church with no involvement at all in the charismatic movement – village hall, out-of-tune piano (often with the added percussive effect of foil milk-bottle tops stuck between its strings), hymns-only menu and a traditional service. It was a test of diplomacy that gradually drew me into playing. It started with “housegroups” (at that stage, there was one group for the whole church, that met in different homes), and I bought a portable electronic keyboard to accompany singing there. After a while Roy Dalpra joined the church, and when I discovered he was a double-bass player of some note, the idea of using music to “wake up” the church was borne. The first “musical service” involved a choir singing some traditional but mainly new material – but arranged in 4-parts. This showed the folk who sang, and to some extent the congregation, that the new material both had merit, and was nice to sing and hear, without being “radical”. A second similar evening followed, and with Kevin Lowen on violin any prejudice against a “music group” (no guitars or amplifiers to be seen!) was broken.
From that point the musical side of church life developed in parallel with the Spiritual, to the point where Woodley was regarded as a pioneer in the area. Occasionally we did silly things, like putting a music group on the back of a lorry for the Carnival. But over the years what I treasure most was the instrumental variety, and the rapport between the musicians; perhaps the highlights were when the music group started playing for weddings and learned a classical repertoire, and the carol services at Christmas. The music group was mix of church members, and a number of students from Bulmershe College who “found” the church; those students who were studying to teach music were natural additions to our music team; they came with the ability to play at least two instruments – and on the case of one player, the ability to pick up ANY brass instrument and play it at first touch. So at times the church was treated to the sounds of a cello, euphonium, cornet to add to the violin, bass, piano, clarinet, flute and trombone of the church musicians.
Apart from services, and countless weddings, we occasionally did “something completely different”; one thing we did was a fund-raising concert – a series of pieces I arranged for the extended group [programme to be inserted].
Jazz popped up again by accident; a money-raising “music marathon” in connection with youth work, and the idea was to try and make music continually for 24 hours. We (the instrumentalists in the church music group) wanted to do “something different”, so we signed up for Jazz towards the end of the stint – it went down quite well, and a year or two later we were asked to re-form to play for Andy and Michaela Partington’s wedding reception (and, later on, Stephanie Barter’s). As jazz it wasn’t terribly good, but as a “fun experience” it was great.
Woodley Baptist had no organ, just a digital piano; I did play the organ for a number of weddings in other churches, but they were relatively rare.
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