Charity fundraising double-header!

On Saturday, the Belvoir Big Band completed a charity fundraising double header in Melton, with nearly £3,000 raised for local causes in two weeks.

On the 17th October, the band were delighted to join The Spotlight Theatre Group in putting on a community concert at St. Mary’s Church, raising money for Dove Cottage and The Community Music Project. This is the second year that the band have performed in the beautiful St. Mary’s Church, and it is always a popular venue for us with great acoustics and always an enthusiastic local crowd. We were very pleased to have been invited to join in with the fundraising event by Lisa Mills and the Spotlight Theatre Group who organised for a number of local musicians to come together to help raise funds for the two great charities.

The band played a range of popular numbers, including You’ll Never Walk Alone, where the audience all joined in waving their arms with their phone torches. We also did a joint performance of New York New York with the Hickling Community Choir, which filled the church to the rafters and was well received. At the end of a wonderful evening over £1,300 was raised by the event, which will be split between Dove Cottage and The Community Music Project and the band were very pleased to have been able to contribute to such a successful musical night.

Just two weeks before the band had held its own charity fundraising event in Melton Theatre, on Saturday 3rd October, where £1,500 was raised for Macmillan Cancer Support. Melton is clearly very consistent with its charity giving, as our concert also raised just over £1,300, and the amount is being topped up by the band to £1,500 for Macmillan, as our treasurer prefers round numbers. I should add that this amount included two donations in support of the event, one for £200 from the Clifton Wealth Partnership Ltd. with a further £100 from Nicholas Richardsons Chartered Surveyors. A big thank you to both sponsors for their generous support.

The night was full or a range of songs and big band numbers from across the decades, with everything from a James Bond medley and Glenn Miller’s Little Brown Jug and Tuxedo Junction, to popular songs by Michael Bublé and Nat King Cole. We had a number of instrumental soloists perform from around the band and also this was our first big theatre night with our brand-new trio of singers, Joe Williams, Duncan Fielding and Elaine Bishop, who rounded the night off with a wonderful vocal trio with the band.

This has been a challenging year for the band, with a number of key changes around the band, so it was great to see the band performing to a high standard in both events, and we received some very supportive comments from the Melton audience on both occasions. The band was founded by Jon Jayes in 2015 to be a community band that supported local charities and good causes, and we have been delighted to carry on this proud tradition and we look forward to performing in Melton again in 2027 and beyond.

Jonathan Barker, Musical Director