Playing music together with others, from childhood into adulthood, is a source of great joy for many people. As well as developing our playing ability as musicians, it also gives us a sense of community and purpose and an opportunity to socialise with others. Leisure time music making can also improve our mental well-being and provide personal solace during difficult times in our lives.
We believe in intergenerational participatory music making and have witnessed how much young people can benefit from playing alongside adults and vice versa. We teach the same repertoire across both our youth and adult ensembles so that we can perform together as one large intergenerational band at parades, festivals and events.
You are never too young or too old to pick up an instrument and start making music and we want to support and encourage as many people as possible to learn an instrument and experience the joy of playing together with others. We can provide instrumental tuition for complete beginners or those returning to an instrument they haven’t played for a number of years. Once you’ve mastered the basics you can then join our youth or adult street band ensemble.
Practising with Bright Sounds is the highlight of my week. It's a really lovely, friendly supportive group of people to play with and a safe place to try your hand at improvisation. We're mixed abilities, from really quite good players to people just starting out or just coming back to playing, but it doesn't really matter. We all have fun and since we started out we've all improved loads. Before joining I played the sax, but lacking people to play with it generally just started in its case. Now I have a load of musicians to play with, and they're starting to be friends.