Tickets available for Visit of Japan Staff Band
April 9, 2011 by Rob Westwood-Payne
Filed under Events, Featured, News
As part of ISB120, the 120th anniversary celebrations of The Salvation Army’s International Staff Band, Cradley Heath Band is hosting a visit of The Salvation Army’s Japan Staff Band, prior to them taking part in a concert featuring all eight staff bands at the Royal Albert Hall, London.
The Japan Staff Band will be giving a concert of varied music on Spring Bank Holiday Monday, 30 May 2011 at 7:00pm at Cradley Heath Salvation Army, Meredith Street, Cradley Heath, West Midlands B64 5EP. Tickets will be priced at £10.00 in advance (£12.50 on the door if available) and are available now online using the form below, and from Cradley Heath Salvation Army from 3 April 2011.
The Japan Staff Band is attached to The Salvation Army’s Territorial Headquarters in Tokyo, taking part in special meetings to convey the love of God and bring people to Christ, along with other events in local communities – concerts, performances at welfare institutes or hospitals, participation in community events, etc.
All the members of the Japan Staff Band are members of Salvation Army churches in Tokyo and its suburban areas. Some of them work for the Headquarters or social institutes or hospitals of The Salvation Army, while others have general occupations in common business world.
Japan is of course, very much in the news at the moment. We are praying and thinking of the people of Japan and hoping some sense of normality might return to their lives before too long.
We read daily in our newspapers and watch on our televisions at the scale of devastation and concern. We can only imagine what life is like. Bandmaster Hajime Suzuki has spoken about the effect on him and his Salvationist colleagues. Even though he is a long way (around 230kms) from the affected areas, the effect on Tokyo has been enormous. Even now, there is uncertainty about Salvationists who lived in the area hit by the tsunami and earthquake. We all pray for Hajime and his colleagues, those who are still unaccounted for, their families and other people of Japan.
Of course, the Japan Staff Band’s plans for their UK tour have, quite properly, taken second place in recent days but it is very apparent that we look forward to the band being with us in just a couple of months. They have, in the past week, recorded their tour CD. God bless them as they finalise their tour plans for we look forward to them being with us and I know that they will receive an enormous welcome from the people of Cradley Heath.
We are delighted they will be with us as part of their UK tour prior to the ISB120 event.
Don’t miss out on this “once in a lifetime” event!
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Rob Westwood-Payne grew up in The Salvation Army at Norwich Citadel. He left Norwich to study at the University of Warwick and became fully involved in the music centre there culminating in his conducting Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue to a full house in Symphony Hall in Birmingham. He also transferred to The Salvation Army at Coventry City, where he became Songster Leader at the age of 21. He was made Songster Leader at Cradley Heath in April 1998 shortly before marrying Gail in the following October. He is a former leader of the West Midlands Divisional Youth Chorus and is currently Programme Director at the West Midlands Divisional Summer School for The Salvation Army. He is an Associate Solicitor in the Licensing Team of a national practice based in the south west.