Distant Echoes Return Transformed (Part 1)

For this post, we’re dipping back out of the past and into the present to give you an update on a partnership initiative the Friends of The Wizard and The Typhoon are involved in with Greenfield Community College, the school that now provides education for many of the young people here in Shildon as well…

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Going Home 1919

Most recently I’ve been writing up the story of Tom Bulch and George Allan during the Great War years and have finally reached the end of the war and the return of George Allan’s son Willoughby and Tom Bulch’s son Jack (his other son Thomas Edward Jnr was killed in 1916). I learned that Jack…

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Minutes, Manuscript and Munitions

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…

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Revealing who Thomas Bulch wasn’t (Part 3)

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…

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Lessons in Presumption

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…

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Revealing who Thomas Bulch wasn’t (Part 2)

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…

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Revealing who Thomas Edward Bulch wasn’t? (Part 1)

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’…

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Sidetracked #3 – John Malthouse, Summoner of The Typhoon

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…

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Sidetracked #2 – The Enduring Influence of Samuel Lewins

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…

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Breathing New Air Into Sleeping Giants Of Brass

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…

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