Moray Concert Brass looks forward to a bright future

Moray Concert Brass has been a mainstay of the local music scene in Moray for almost 30 years, and despite the difficulties of the last year are looking forward to a bright future of music making and raising money for local charities.

The band was for many years part of Moray Council’s music instruction service and in that time, hundreds of young people benefited from the joy and discipline of playing in a band while also being active within local communities across the region doing regular concerts throughout the area and raising money for many local charities.

Last year, the band’s founder and musical director, Glenn Munro took early medical retirement, following ongoing cancer treatment, from his position as a musical instructor at the Council, so the band was developed as a local community band and gained charitable status in March 2020.

Prior to Covid I’m sure many of you enjoyed their concerts in Elgin Town Hall where they played a variety of concerts like ‘An Evening of Rock and Pop’ which included tunes like Proud Mary, Mr Blue Sky, I Would do Anything for Love, Let Me Entertain You and Angels. Maybe the ‘Movie Concerts for Kids’ was the one you enjoyed with tunes such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Frozen, Star Wars and Flashdance.

You may have also heard ‘The Big Band Style’ which was also part of their repertoire including Sway, Birdland, My Way and MacArthur Park.

The band also travelled extensively and performed their concert tours in France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy. I’m sure their music was much appreciated and is being missed. Hopefully they will be able to return in the not too distant future.

The band has not been able to meet in person since the first covid lockdown but they have not been idle and are currently having zoom rehearsals on Thursday evenings, during term time. Mr Munro

We hope that we will be able to return to in person rehearsals in the Autumn, but until then we are meeting up online, with players able to play along to pieces and enjoy making music together all be it remotely.”

“Now we are a community band we would like anyone of any age, who would like to join us to get in touch. Although we are predominately a youth band, we have members of all ages and everyone is welcome. If you use to play but no longer have an instrument we may be able to lend you one. Even if you have not played for a while or are fairly new player there is a place for you in our band, some come and join us.”

The band currently has a membership of between 40 and 50 and the age range is from 10yrs old to over 60, the oldest at the moment being 68, but I’m not supposed to tell you that. Members are from across the whole of Moray. It is a great testament to the band that even those who leave to go to University etc come back during holidays and help out playing in concerts.

There is a wonderful selection of instruments in the band, trumpets. cornets, flugelhorns, tenor horns, baritones, trombones, euphoniums and tubas. There is also a percussion section with, drum kit, glockenspiel, xylophone, bass drum and timpani.

As the band is no longer part of the music instruction service it can no longer access the council’s musical instruments, but a generous grant of almost £7500 from The National Lottery Community Fund, made possible thanks to National Lottery players has allowed them to start their own collection of instruments, which will enable people to join the band and borrow an instrument.

Musical instruments are very expensive, a tenor horn can cost between £500-£900 and a BBb Bass Tuba, for example, costs in the region of £4400 so the band is still looking to buy more instruments so that they have a full range of instruments to lend. They therefore are looking for local sponsorship and if anyone local business or individual would like to help they would be delighted to hear from them.

The band can’t wait to get back to playing together and performing for you, the public, once again.

They are planning to bring their Brass for Hope concert which had world class soloists from London and USA performing, as soon as Covid restrictions allow.

With more great plans in the pipeline like another Magical Moments movie concert for kids as well as their 2022 Scottish Tour to Skye and Oban, it’s obvious Moray Concert Brass haven’t let Covid dampen their enthusiasm.

Mr Munro concluded by saying,“After the last difficult twelve months, making and listening to live music is, we think, a great way to help everyone rediscover the pleasure of living and help people to reconnect with their local communities. We look forward to welcoming the people of Moray to our band and to our concerts in the not too distant future.”

To get involved contact Glenn on 07772 765920 or email glennmunro42@gmail.com

It’s widely recognised that the two most stressful events in life are getting married and moving home. Yet we often hear talk of that ‘dream wedding’ or ‘dream home’.

RE/MAX Elite are estate agents, so no surprise then that our focus is on the latter of those two events.

Working with the pandemic has of course had its challenges but it has been an amazing time to be an estate agent.

Not because the market has gone through the roof, though that certainly has been the case. No, the reason that this has been such an awesome time to be an estate agent is because like many other industries, we have been forced to adapt to survive. We have had to think outside the box to find new ways of doing business in an environment where health and safety has had to be our number one point of focus and this has led to some major improvements for our clients and their buyers. Whilst being in lock-down created pent up demand for a change of home, it was not something that was widely predicted. What was considered was that many people would be reluctant to list their home for sale because of the risks involved with having complete strangers wanting to view. The government gave strong guidelines having considered home moves an essential service after the first lock-down and we had to make sure we not only followed these, but were seen to be doing so.

Another consideration was that even if we did have buyers wanting us to sell their homes, what could we do to minimise the risk of catching and spreading Covid 19? Masks and hand sanitiser were the obvious answer but it couldn’t stop there because of the risks involved, for example writing up and signing contracts. Our solution was simple, go digital, so the first major change was to scrap written contracts and produce electronic documents sent by email for e-signature, thus cutting down the amount of time spent in our client’s homes doing paperwork and the associated risks of transmission.

The next obvious issue was viewings, how could we do these and keep everybody safe?

Again there are government guidelines. These include the obvious wearing of face masks and use of hand sanitiser, restricting the numbers viewing at any given time and having the home owners out of the house and of course buyers had to have some sort of online viewing. At first many agents took video footage of houses, a simple solution that ticked the box but didn’t really help anyone.

At RE/MAX Elite, we were already offering virtual tours, so we spent the time during the first lockdown learning how to improve these. Adding more content to help buyers with their research making it easier to buy by turning the virtual tour into an interactive property brochure with video content, packed with all the information buyers need to consider in order to make an offer.

There are several benefits of our virtual tour. Firstly, all buyers can view a home straight away without having to book an appointment. This saves a lot of frustration and makes looking for a new home easier. Buyers won’t view a home in person if they don’t like what they see in the virtual tour. This saves everyone time and cuts down on the number of unnecessary disruptions for our clients. Taking fewer physical viewings is also good for the environment as it cuts down the amount of traveling to and from various properties.

Our clients benefit greatly from this new way of doing things. No one really wants great swathes of people coming to view their personal space and there is nowhere more personal than your own home. Every time a viewing takes place, there is a panic to make sure everything is as it should be and home owners can get quite stressed. Now that nosey acquaintance, who just wants to snoop, gets to do so without you knowing or having to go to too much trouble. Those folk, who do visit, are much more likely to want to buy your home so the disruption is more worthwhile.

The biggest benefit by far that we have seen though, is that there are folk who will view a property through one of our virtual tours and armed with a copy of the home report as back up, have made an offer to purchase a home without actually going to the house at all.

When the internet was first invented, we laughed at the thought of buying goods online, little did we know that one day, folk would use it to buy houses.

So how much do we charge for a virtual tour? It is after all, an amazing tool helping us to sell more homes, much faster and due to the increased number of buyers they attract, at higher prices!

The answer is that at RE/MAX Elite we took the decision that to charge extra, especially through a pandemic would seem mercenary. A brick layer doesn’t charge for his trowel, a mechanic doesn’t charge you for his tools either. So no, we do not charge for what looks like being a fantastic tool that will help attract more qualified buyers and help us get the best price for your home.