As we carefully return to normal life the band are still performing virtually and we wanted to share our recent releases.

If you watched our Christmas concert you would have heard the exciting news that we were working with Grammy Award-winning, EMMY and BAFTA nominated composer Lorne Balfe. Lorne arranged his theme to “His Dark Materials” especially for us so it was a fantastic premiere for the band. Also an appropriate local connection, with the books being set and author Philip Pullman living just up the road in Oxford! We opened up the performance to all interested musicians and had a huge number of responses. Once again, our MD Neil Brownless took on the heroic task of pulling all the recordings together and to great success. To quote Lorne himself “It’s been such an honour to see over 160 phenomenal musicians come together to perform the main theme from #HisDarkMaterials. Congratulations to everyone at @abingdonconcert on an incredible feat”.

Watch the performance here on YouTube: His Dark Materials Main Theme

The last year has allowed us to collaborate with other musicians too and we were delighted to team up with XBY Concert Band. XBY is made up of former member of Bromley Youth Concert Band. Their MD Dennis Mycroft and Neil set the bands a musical challenge, performing Philip Sparke’s lively piece Merry-Go-Round. It was great to work with XBY and we hope we can maybe do something face-to-face with them one day.

We’re now working on what could be our final virtual performance. These have been tough times for musicians, from professionals whose livelihoods depend on it, to amateurs who miss playing together, and so many more whose jobs are connected to live music. We hope in the coming months we can return to playing and performing in person. But for now watch out for our rendition of the theme to the video game “Evil Genius” created by Oxford-based Rebellion.

All our performances can be viewed on our Abingdon Concert Band YouTube Channel.