Join the band

The Rutland Big Band is a 'community band'. We're amateurs, but we have a professional band leader who has been making us sound better and better over the last few years. Our numbers have grown steadily, but we still welcome more players of any age. If you fancy playing in a live big band, then please get in touch. It's a great opportunity to improve your playing, and you're more than welcome to come along to see how you get on. We'd suggest somewhere around grade 5 standard as a minimum. We try to practice a variety of music to keep everyone happy, so we play jazz, 40s swing, some latin tunes and more.

We practice on Monday evenings in Uppingham, when our band leader and trombone maestro, Marcus Reynolds, helps us play the notes in the right order. Afterwards some of us retire to one of the local pubs. For non-locals, Uppingham is in the county of Rutland, roughly equidistant between Leicester, Nottingham and Peterborough. To further help the search engines, the big band can play in Stamford, Melton Mowbray and Oakham.

What instrument should I be able to play?

The music we play generally calls for people to play a trombone, trumpet, saxophone, bass, keyboard or drums. If you play any of these then there's no harm in getting in touch, but we are usually more interested in some instruments than others. Give us a call and then come along and see how you get on.

We are now, in November 2009, particularly looking for

- a bass player
- trumpets
- trombonists