Some years ago there was a group of musos in various parts of Australia's east who wanted to dilute the dominance of Irish tunes and styles of playing; they organised a series of performances of English dances where only English tunes would be played. Anyone who wanted to join in was welcomed to be part of that evening's version of "The Old Empire Band".

Various free reed instruments tended to dominate and thus most tunes were in D, G, sometimes C and the Em, Am (and, occasionally, Dm) variants. Those of you who remember the New Victory Band or Flowers and Frolics will have an idea of the sound and the repertoire, as there were usually a bass trombone or two and occasionally a tuba. At what I think might have been the last performance of The Old Empire Band (National Folk Festival in Canberra, 1992?) there were 42 players on stage, with some bass trombones and clarinets joining in with no troble at all. I had specially invited a mate of mine to bring his French horn along and join us.

Some of you may have met Tom Loy, the player of the French Horn, as I gather he lived in Arizona for a while and played in an Alaskan equivalent to Australia's bush bands. He lived in Vancouver for some time, woring in the museum there analysing organic residues on prehistoric stone tools. [Tom was the only real person mentioned by name in the book version of Jurassic Park and was the person who did much of the analysis of the residues on Utzi's tools; Utzi was the name given to the ~5000 year old 'iceman' recovered from the Austrian (oops! Italian) Alps some years ago.]

Tom (now no longer with us) had no trouble playing French horn along with English dance tunes in the various keys used; neither did Ian Blake on his clarinet. So I'm puzzled by the notion that players of such instruments should have difficulties with arrangements. Is there something vital that I've missed?

Cheers, Rowan