February 2024

One of England’s top electronic and theatre organists will be performing in Wanstead this month as part of the East London and Essex Electronic Keyboard Club’s programme of events.

Michael Wooldridge – who has performed at film premieres in Leicester Square and on BBC Radio 2 – will be bringing his eclectic mix of show tunes and classical and big band music to Wanstead Library on 14 February from 7.30pm.

The performance is open to visitors (doors open at 7pm; tickets: £12; under-16s: £2).

Visit wnstd.com/ekc

In the 36th of a series of articles, David Bird from the Redbridge Music Society introduces mezzo-soprano Annabel Kennedy and pianist Daniel Peter Silcock, who will be performing in Wanstead this month

Two main aims of Redbridge Music Society, now in its 75th season, are to bring high-quality, live chamber recitals to the people of Redbridge and to support and promote young talented musicians. This month, Annabel Kennedy, accompanied by Daniel Peter Silcock, will give a recital with the theme A Sundial of Love, which will include works by Richard Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, Grieg, Vaughan Williams, Eric Coates and others.

Annabel Kennedy recently graduated from the Royal College of Music’s International Opera Studio as a Siow-Furniss Scholar. She is a Samling Artist, a Britten-Pears Young Artist for 2022–2023, a Making Music PDGYA Young Artist, a Glyndebourne Jerwood Young Artist for 2023 and a Garsington Alveraz Young Artist for 2024.

Annabel has already sung in many operas, including Die Zauberflöte, Hänsel und Gretel, Orpheus in the Underworld, Don Giovanni, Der Rosenkavalier, La Traviata and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her concert highlights include a solo debut at London’s Cadogan and Wigmore Halls. Annabel’s many awards include first prizes in the Royal Over-Seas League music competition, the Ashburnham English Song Awards, the Dame Patricia Routledge National English Song Competition and second prize in the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards Competition at Wigmore Hall.

Daniel Peter Silcock studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he was awarded MMus (distinction) and BMus (first-class) degrees in piano performance. Currently, he is a scholarship student at the Royal Academy of Music and is already recognised as a distinguished song accompanist.

Daniel has won a number of prizes for song accompaniment, including the Marjorie Thomas Art of Song Prize and the Major Van Someren-Godfrey Prize. He has also received the A Ramsay Calder Debussy Prize, second prize in the Roma International Piano Competition in 2019 and the Franz Schubert Institute UK prize. 

Daniel has performed in prestigious venues, such as the Wigmore Hall, Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, the Caird Hall in Dundee and St James’s Church, Piccadilly. This year, he returns to the Wigmore Hall with the Royal Academy of Music Song Circle, performing with tenor Samuel Stopford, and in January, took part in Renée Fleming’s SongStudio at Carnegie Hall.

Please come and support these very talented young musicians.

Annabel and Daniel will perform at Wanstead Library on 13 February from 8pm (tickets on the door; visitors: £12; members: £8). Call 07380 606 767. Redbridge Music Society is supported by Vision RCL and affiliated to Making Music.

A rare diving duck was spotted for the first time on Wanstead Flats last month.

“While scanning Jubilee Pond on 16 January, I noted a drake Ferruginous Duck asleep on a small, unfrozen part of the lake. It later woke up and could be seen swimming and diving. Although there was no sign of it the following day, three days later it relocated to Eagle Pond in Snaresbrook, where it was admired by many. This very rare diving duck is native to south-east Europe,” said Tim Harris of the Wren Wildlife Group. 

Last month’s litter-picking session in Wanstead Park unearthed an unusual find.

“The session was well attended, including some new faces and families. We collected 15 bags of rubbish, but the prize find was the skull of a Roe Deer (not a Reindeer as suggested by a young litter picker). This was likely from the collection of former park keeper Jordan, as we only have Muntjac Deer in the park,” said Gill James of the Friends of Wanstead Parklands.

Litter picking takes place on the second Sunday of each month from 11am.

Visit wnstd.com/fwp

With brass bands on the decline nationally, local residents are lucky to have a thriving ensemble. Tim Sullivan reports on a special concert and album launch by Redbridge Brass in Aldersbrook this month

A recent article in The Times highlighted the plight of brass bands across the country. Many are suffering from the effects of reduced funding and increased running costs and are in danger of closing after many decades of entertaining, supporting and educating their local communities.

Having been a member of the brass band fraternity since 1967, I can fully understand the feeling of loss these band members must be experiencing. Growing up in a brass band family teaches you so much about teamwork, discipline and problem-solving when facing the many technical challenges demanded by the increasingly complex music being composed for bands today.

I am pleased to report that Redbridge Brass, a band of which I am a founding member, is bucking the trend and is thriving by undertaking new ventures, such as performing the live soundtrack to The Snowman to sell-out audiences in Aldersbrook and welcoming passengers boarding the Epping and Ongar Railway at Christmas with jolly festive favourites.

Redbridge Brass has become a formidable force in the brass band world, gaining numerous accolades. We have claimed the London and Southern Counties Championship title an impressive 14 times and graced the iconic stage of the Royal Albert Hall 18 times for the National Brass Band Championships, most recently in 2022.

Beyond the competitive stage, we have performed at many prestigious venues and events, including Trafalgar Square for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Torch Relay Ceremony, Glastonbury Festival with the chart-topping band Hot Chip and for West Ham United at their Remembrance and Christmas matches.

Last year, the band returned to holding its rehearsals within the walls of Redbridge Music Service (RMS) in Hainault, where it was formed. This is an exciting new period as we are already planning joint concerts with the youngsters from RMS so they may be inspired to follow in our footsteps. Whilst I am very proud to still be a part of the band from its early music school days (along with two others), it is a joy to be welcoming superb younger players into the fold to ensure the band’s longevity.

We have worked hard to generate enough income to fund the recording of our first new album since 2002. Entitled On The Town, the album includes works specially written for the band, plus some stylish arrangements of standards from the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Lennon/McCartney and Stan Kenton. The album will be officially released at a special concert in the splendid acoustics of St Gabriel’s Church in Aldersbrook this month.

The concert will take place at St Gabriel’s Church on 17 February from 7.30pm (tickets: £15). Visit wnstd.com/onthetown

Local residents are encouraged to get involved in Wanstead’s 2024 moth-recording project.

“Although the number of moth species recorded on the Wanstead patch in 2023 was down on previous years, there were still many exciting finds, with 300 different species seen (plus 26 butterfly species). Please get in touch if you’d like to help with this year’s count,” said Wren Wildlife Group member Tim Harris.

Among last year’s finds was a Large Emerald, a first for this area, spotted near Wanstead Park’s Temple in June.

Visit wnstd.com/wren

Members of Aldersbrook Horticultural Society are delighted to welcome Fergus Garrett, the Head Gardener of Great Dixter Garden in West Sussex, to their February meeting. Ruth Martin reports

Fergus Garrett is described as one of the most influential living garden designers and horticultural educators in Britain today. Since 2006, he has been the Chief Executive of the Great Dixter Trust and has continued to develop the garden, building on the work of Christopher Lloyd (1921–2006), world-renowned gardener and horticulturalist. Under Fergus’s leadership, the garden has become a centre for education and a place of pilgrimage for horticulturalists from around the world. 

At the age of 27, Fergus joined the Great Dixter team and worked closely with owner Christopher Lloyd, who wrote of Garrett: “Fergus is an amazing proselytiser. He believes in what we are doing and spreads the word… The number of visitors bears witness to his success. He can grip an audience right from the start, but he is totally unselfish. As long as he is at the helm, I have no fears for Dixter. He is an incredibly hard worker.”

The garden at Great Dixter is managed in the same way as in Christopher Lloyd’s time, with its vibrant planting giving high-impact visual displays – the mixed borders are densely planted with trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, annuals and climbers. There is no bare soil and the planting is within a strong infrastructure of buildings, garden hedges and landscaped trees. Plants are fed with organic waste and no cutting back takes place until spring, providing a good resource for wildlife. Wild flower meadows surround the gardens and these are cut twice a year after the seeds are set. Trees within the meadows are allowed to grow naturally without too much intervention through pruning. Outside the house, there is always a beautiful display of bulbs regularly changed to reflect the season. At Great Dixter, much attention is paid to encouraging wildlife – ecological surveys show the abundance of insects and birds, and water is from their own borehole. They grow most of the plants themselves and are constantly experimenting with different forms of planting.

At our February meeting, Fergus will be speaking about succession planting – showing us how to keep our borders well planted throughout the year, just as the team at Great Dixter manage to do so successfully. There will also be plenty of opportunities for questions at the end of his talk.

Originally established in 1918, Aldersbrook Horticultural Society was reformed in 2018 and now meets regularly on the second Tuesday of each month at the Aldersbrook Bowls Club. We are a friendly bunch: keen gardeners, novice gardeners, indoor gardeners, balcony gardeners, allotmenteers and those interested in the local natural environment. We organise two visits a year to interesting gardens and maintain the gardens at Aldersbrook Bowls Club and Aldersbrook Medical Centre.

Fergus’s talk will take place on 13 February at Aldersbrook Bowls Club from 7.30pm (visitors: £5). Visit wnstd.com/ahs or email aldersbrookhorticul@gmail.com

In the 18th of a series of articles charting Cadent’s impact on Redbridge Lane West allotments, Sally Parker is frustrated by delays to the planned works, which received Secretary of State consent last month 

It’s six months since I last wrote about plans by Cadent, the energy infrastructure company, to carry out works to their gas station on Redbridge Lane West, next to our allotments.

After many months with no updates, Cadent held a drop-in session in late November 2023 to “provide an opportunity for all local residents to learn more about the project and ask questions.” Some plot holders were able to attend, together with our local ward councillor and the National Allotment Society’s London representative. It was, in many ways, an unsatisfactory event, as Cadent were unable to provide meaningful answers to our questions, which included how they will comply with all the planning decision conditions, provide safe access to our plots during the work and provide equivalent facilities, including accessible toilets. These are important for everyone who uses the allotments but are especially vital for Sprout There!, a charity for adults with disabilities. We were promised a reply before Christmas.

A response arrived on 22 December, but frustratingly, the answers were mostly non-committal, with repeated statements that Cadent is working closely with the council. And it appears that all hangs on a government decision regarding the application for approval of Cadent’s plans under Section 8 of the 1925 Allotments Act. As I write, Cadent has just told us approval has come through and they “will be working with our delivery partners to establish the construction timeline.” They promise a further update in mid-February.

So, three years on from Cadent announcing their plans to us, we still don’t know when the work will start – or when it will finish. We don’t know when allotment plots decommissioned at Cadent’s request since summer 2022 to make way for the pending works will be reinstated. The plot holders who agreed to take a break for two years are unlikely to be able to return to their restored plots before 2026, five years after Cadent first told us about their plans. They have lost several harvests.

Cadent’s project is programmed to take two years, so it will be difficult to complete the works within the government’s regulatory period of 2021–2025. Cadent appear to have underestimated the complexities of carrying out this project on statutory allotment land and, in particular, the requirement to consult the National Allotment Society and obtain consent from the Secretary of State.

For those of us lucky enough to be able to still work our plots, it is disheartening to be alongside the abandoned – and now overgrown – vacated areas. Such a waste of valuable gardening space. I hope a clear programme will be drawn up soon, and the work expedited in a timely and considerate fashion in line with all of Cadent’s promises.

For more information on Cadent’s plans, visit wnstd.com/cadentplan

Redbridge Council leader Jas Athwal and Wanstead Village councillor Jo Blackman co-wrote a letter to TfL last month to request urgent action over disruption to the Central Line, which is impacting 10 stations across the borough.

“Whilst we welcome the much-needed improvement work and refurbishment of trains, it is unfortunate that TfL has not made provision to ensure adequate service for our residents in the meantime,” said the letter addressed to TfL Commissioner Andy Lord.

Read the letter in full at wnstd.com/totfl