BandFests

Second Wind Community Concert Band is part of a larger community of music-makers from around the Maritimes. Likeminded Community Bands from all over have established friends through creating annual Community Concert BandFests, three times a year throughout Nova Scotia.

Over the last 25 + years the BandFest has evolved into amazing workshop type weekends that always end in a beautiful Concert for the area folk where the fest is held.

We start our Band year with the first BandFest held in the Fall to get everyone’s chops back in shape from a summertime break perhaps starting in Cape Breton with the Cape Breton Community BandFest held in Sydney, NS the weekend before Thanksgiving. 

There are folk who come from all over the Maritimes and we have specialized clinicians for each instrument and special guest conductors to service a Novice Level called The MacKay Band (named after Ron MacKay, one of the Community Band Conductors and great Bandsman and Music Educator who passed away in 2008) and then a ‘seasoned’ Band called the desBarres Band named after a forefather who discover and developed Sydney, NS.

This Bandfest series then happens again the last weekend in May in Halifax, NS called the Halifax Community BandFest hosted by the Second Chances Community Concert Band NS.

The year finishes with the third BandFest in the summertime, hosted by the Annapolis Basin Community Band in Annapolis Royal, the third weekend in July.

Both Festivals have the Novice MacKay Band and in Halifax the seasoned band is called the Hargreaves Band named after a great NS bandsman and colleague of many and of Ron MacKays’, Jim Hargreaves and in Annapolis it’s called the Champlain Band named after one of the discoverers of Annapolis Royal.

Each BandFest boasts the best ever BandFest with amazing music making and learning curves along with the development of many great friendships and long time relationships because of these events.

Truly a ‘Music For Life’ experience.