For this blog post, as it’s been a while since I’ve posted on any progress, I’ve included a piece of recent correspondence between Ken Irvin of Ashbourne Band (whom I must again thank) and myself, in part because it illustrates one of the challenges we’re having at the moment in understanding George Allan. Why did…
When I think of the Victorian era, which came to a close almost 120 years ago, it’s tempting to consider how our perception of the importance of time has changed. We currently enjoy an era of near instant gratification where much of the information we need can be summoned to our presence within seconds; where…
This will be my third, and probably final, piece explaining another explainable misunderstanding in the musical identity of Thomas Edward Bulch, who as we, and others, have said elsewhere DID frequently compose under pseudonyms, but not necessarily all of the ones that have been associated with him. It is my belief now that Thomas Edward…
When you’re researching something from history you need to be a little bit careful. Usually you’re dealing with scraps of information almost as if you’re trying to interpret events from what appear to be punctuation marks in the life of your subject with all of the sentences in between missing. Occasionally whoever created that information…
T E Bulch was not Charles Le Thiere. As with Carl Volti, Charles Le Thiere is a composer’s pseudonym, but on this occasion we find it was for a Mr. Thomas Wilby Tomkins. This was initially revealed to me via a Wikipedia entry, but as Wikipedia also claims T. E Bulch to be Charles Le…
One of the fascinating things about researching a subject in significant depth is that you sometimes happen across something that may well not have been apparent previously. When this happens you need to make sure to a reasonable degree of comfort that you are correct, and then comes the uncomfortable job of challenging ‘common knowledge’…
I enjoyed looking into Sam Lewins so much that I felt another ‘sidetracked’ piece was in order, about another interesting supporting character in the story of how New Shildon’s bandsmen influenced the Victorian brass scene. This time I want to look a little closer at the man without whom the story could have been so…
Once again I thought it important to deviate briefly from the story of Thomas Edward Bulch and George Allan to tell a little about another of their New Shildon born contemporaries who, whilst not becoming a composer and hence not equalling Bulch and Allan in terms of influence on the brass community, nonetheless went on…
Over a month has now passed since our first concert of George Allan and Thomas Bulch material. I thought it might be a good idea, now that some of the footage is finally emerging, to reflect on the process and the event itself. The Idea The group that we are, as well as the subject…
It was far from an inevitable outcome, that was for sure. I first understood that “The Typhoon” was going to be a critical part of the story of Thomas Edward Bulch when I read his grandson Eric Stanley Tomkins’s well researched book “Thomas Edward Bulch – Musician – A Family History”. In the book Eric…
