Alan Bush. A life - ACE128.3

Sir Michael Tippett talking about choir entering festival at Strasbourg, and the exuberance of returning home by train after winning. Poster for Pageant of Labour, Crystal Palace, October 15-20 (1934), organised by Bush. Interviewer VO asks Tippett about it. Tippett says it was extremely cold during both rehearsals and performances, and about "chaos" of rehearsals. Archive footage of performance with musical excerpt over. Poster with photographs of Bush and Tippett, composer and conductor. Archive footage. Newspaper article, photo of Bush. Bush talks about the Pageant. Archive film of Crystal Palace. Bush talks about Workers’ Music Association, set up in 1936. The London Labour Choral Union concentrated on choral music, with classes in conducting but little connection with other musical disciplines. The brass band movement demonstrated to Bush a much wider interest in music among working people. House and grounds of Wortley Hall where most Workers’ Music Association summer schools were held. Joan Horrocks, Honorary Organiser, WMA Summer School. Bush was Director of Studies until 1975. Musical groups and individuals in classes and other activities. Bush explains that WMA was not just to help bring music of all kinds to working people, but to encourage them to engage with music relating to social problems of all kinds, and to teach them how music related to circumstances – how it developed in different times and in different countries, how musical movements differ nationally and because of local social structures, etc. Tippett talks of the WMA committee and how it guided the movement.