11 August, 2025

Music lovers invited to take a trip on the Silk Road with community band

Double duty… Conductor Natalie Paine with the North Shore Concert Band. She is also a professional French horn player in the Navy Band.

The North Shore Concert Band will take its audience on a musical adventure in its annual performance at the PumpHouse in Takapuna next week.
A Journey Along the Silk Road will have the band’s musicians work through compositions and musical influences from across half the globe, in a varied programme that nods to the historic trade routes that linked east and west.
Band secretary Fran Hutchinson said Silk Road explored beyond European concert traditions to include music from regions along the route, which connected the Far East through to the eastern Mediterranean.
It would still feature music people would recognise, including from the Russians, with Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Scheherezade suite on the programme as well as folk dances from Shostakovich. But Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Indian sounds will also be included. Debussy sneaks in, not geographically, but in recognition of a piece he wrote based on Chinese musical structures.
Fun inclusions are a Bollywood-style piece complete with dancers and music from Disney’s Aladdin film. Movie fans might also be captured by the inclusion of music composed by Joe Hisaishi and used in the film My Neighbour Totoro made by Japan’s renowned Studio Ghibli animation studio.
Hutchinson said the band, which comprises around 30 experienced community musicians from across the North Shore and beyond, had enjoyed working on what was its biggest show of the year, suitable for all ages. It also plays at community events and retirement homes.
The band will once again be under the baton of Natalie Paine, who plays French horn in the Royal New Zealand Navy Band. The Bayswater resident has served as conductor for the concert band for several years. Soloist Courtney Braunert will feature on alto saxophone.
Hutchinson, who is herself a baritone saxophonist, said the band had an association with the PumpHouse stretching back through the venue’s 48-year history. It holds practices weekly in Birkenhead and performs at retirement villages and community events. She says a concert band is like an orchestra without strings, being made up of brass, woodwind and percussion instruments.
Members enjoyed playing together to keep their skills up and to socialise.
“It’s such a buzz playing in a band when it all comes together. There’s nothing like live music.”

• North Shore Concert Band, at the PumpHouse, Sunday 17 August, 2pm. Adult tickets $25, book online at the PumpHouse.

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