Musical Advisor and Co-founder
Graham Dean, born in Altofts in 1944 as a Tyke with parental roots in rural Derbyshire and industrial Staffordshire, was a Junior school teacher and deputy head with responsibility for music until 2002, when he retired.
At thirteen I joined the school brass band as a tenor horn player, reluctantly leaving the instrument behind when I left school at eighteen. Seven years later, married, and now qualified as a Youth Leader and teacher (having worked four exciting years in Civil Engineering), I met, by chance an ex-school colleague and co-tenor horn player, who asked if I would like to join the local colliery band? My time with Aketon Hall Colliery Band coincided with my school being given ‘Middle School’ status – the significance of which was to provide the school with some money to be spent on setting up a music department. Along with woodwind, guitars and varied percussion I bought two cornets, two horns and a euphonium. Four years later, in 1976, I found myself supporting not only a healthy brass band in school but also Knottingley Schools’ Brass Band, which pulled together over fifty brass players from all the local schools.
I still conduct the latter band, now called Knottingley Concert Brass, which makes a considerable impact on our local communities. I also have the privilege of encouraging our local church ensemble. My other “retirement interests” include landscape gardening and bowls – crown green, indoor short mat and indoor long mat.
We chose to join the NMYBB but it would be folly to think that we engineered that choice. I am convinced that everyone involved in the NMYBB has been ‘chosen’ by God to be a part of it. How we as individuals have responded has also not been entirely of our own ‘making’. Much prayer, soul searching and fellowship has gone into, and continues to go into fulfilling our calling to God’s purpose in the expression of The National Methodist Youth Brass Band.
