Bella Tromba visits Poland

The city of Durham is such a beautiful place and we were made to feel very at home during our week long stay at the Durham International Brass Festival. We really packed in the performances. In 5 days we did 12 outreach concerts, a radio broadcast for Durham FM and a recital of contemporary and baroque music at Elvet Church.

This tour for us was particularly emotional because it was the last work that Nicole did with us as a member of Bella Tromba. Nicole is moving onto other things and although we will still be seeing a lot of her during our freelance playing it was the last official date for her.

Nicole founded Bella Tromba with us in September 2004 when we met as postgrads at the Royal Academy of Music. She was there with us for ‘the one man and his dog audience’ concerts we used to do in a local church to try out our repertoire. For years she was the only driver and we used to squeeze into her car for mammoth journeys up to Cumbria with 20 trumpets, 4 suitcases and far too much chocolate and trashy magazines.

She has premiered some of the most fantastic pieces with us at the Purcell Room and the Cheltenham Festival and she has been an asset to the group not only for her playing but also for her patience, sense of humour and determination. We were all really sad to see her go but glad that unlike Robbie Williams in Take That we can still be mates!

We are delighted to be able to bring in Katie Hodges as a new member of Bella Tromba. Katie has worked with us on many occasions. She has even stepped in at the last minute to sightread recital programs with great confidence when someone was ill. Katie is a fellow Northener, although she doesn’t have the brass band roots that Vickie does. Katie’s work has been predominantly orchestral. She works with, among others, the BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Katie is passionate Baroque music and performs regularly on the natural trumpet in the UK and Europe.

We are kick starting this new stage for us with a week in Mielec, Poland studying with Thomas Slusarzyk at the Mielec Music School. We don’t plan on asking katie to do any initiation rituals but we do have plenty of new repertoire to learn including a new work by Peter Longworth called Colori di Roma.

We are working on bringing a new website out but please bear with us while we put it all together. If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see on it let us know!