AN all-female brass band that raises thousands of pounds for the fight against breast cancer is currently tuning up for a great night out in Wellingborough next month.
The Rotary Club of Wellingborough Hatton asked the ‘Boobs & Brass’ band to give a concert at The United Reformed Church in Wellingborough on Saturday October 17 at 7.30pm. And the ladies are delighted to oblige – aiming to swell their charity coffers at the same time!
Tickets are £10 each and proceeds will be split between the Breast Cancer Now and Rotary Club charities. Band organiser Margaret Betts promises an evening full of entertaining, well-known music with something to suit everyone’s taste. She added: “We hope to send everyone home with a smile on their face!”
Formed by two Kettering friends nine years ago – Margaret Betts and her friend Jane Nichols – the band practises at Raunds Conservative Club and is ever-expanding, attracting new members to its ranks.
Margaret told Extra Local: “Boobs & Brass continues to grow with more and more girls from the brass banding world wanting to be part of the concept. We now have three groups of girls – the original group in the Midlands, another in Yorkshire and a third in the South East of England. To date, the amazing groups of people have raised £170,000 – the majority of this going to Breast Cancer Campaign (which has just merged with Breakthrough Breast Cancer to become a new charity: Breast Cancer Now).
“All the money we donate to the breast cancer charity goes to pay for specific research projects and, at the beginning of this year, we undertook our seventh project – the aim of which was to understand how faults in PKD genes can cause breast cancer, which was being researched at the University of Cambridge by Dr Paul Edwards. The cost of this was £17,545 and we hoped that, in the whole of 2015, we would raise this amount. Well, unbelievably, the three ‘Boobie Bands’ managed to raise this amount by the end of June!
“So now we have moved on to our eighth project; this one is at the University of Dundee and will cost £12,700 which we hope to fully fund by the end of June 2016.
“So far this year, we have performed concerts at the Butlins Brass Band Festival in Skegness, the Derngate Theatre with 300+ male voices, Verwood near Bournemouth with another all-female band – Blushing Brass, which featured the world renowned Kirsty Abbotts as guest soloist – Chesterfield and Worthing. Forthcoming concerts will be performed at Chatham, Wellingborough, Kettering, Eastbourne and Sheffield.”
Margaret and her musical colleagues are greatly touched by the support they receive. She said: “We are helped greatly by people from outside the brass band world and from people connected with other brass bands. The village of Thorpe Waterville recently held a Duck Race and raised £366 towards our cause and a father and son from a brass band in Norfolk did a 73-mile bike ride and raised £300. Another bandsman has arranged ‘Don‘t Stop Believin’ especially for the band and a percentage of the sales of this music is being donated to our charity.
“It is simply amazing what people will do.”
Find out more about the band, view the website: boobsandbrass.com
Pictured above – PRETTY AMAZING IN PINK: The ladies of the Boobs & Brass Band in concert recently.
