Oxfordshire County Music Service 

This May we sent the message out to create an epic online performance of 'Over the Rainbow'.

Thank you to everyone who responded and sent in their videos and recordings. We had over 250 people submit their performances with loads of different instruments! Watch this space for the next one!!

While the summer is taking a break, so are we, there will be no doorstep concert this week (11th June 2020).

See you all again for the next one!
Lynette

Officially the NHS clapping is over, but the doorstep concerts will continue at Stonevale for a few weeks more.

Tonight at 8pm we will perform two pieces:

Allegro brilliante by Ten Have, for the Classical lovers (Katherine and Lynette)

Let it Be by The Beatles, for the Pop folk (Richard and the GC band)

All depending on the kindness of the weather of course!
Thanks,
Lynette
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Songs from movies tomorrow night!

1. Ladies in Lavender  (Lynette and Katherine)
2. Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Great Coxwell Band)
3. My Favourite Things from Sound of Music (Great Coxwell Band)

This week Katherine and Lynette - Beethoven - Spring Sonata, 1st movement.

Spring Sonata

For those of you who missed the performances last week - you can see the videos below, thanks to all the performers!

Memory
A Whole New World
Bare Necessities

More this week when Katherine and Lynette will play the first movement of the Spring Sonata by Beethoven.

On Thursday the “Great Coxwell Lockdown Band” will perform three popular songs from Musicals. The band is growing, and as being outside is now a little more relaxed, anyone who would like to play along are welcome to join us at a safe distance. Email Lynette at [email protected] if you would like a copy of the music.
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VE Day.  Friday 8th May 1945.

Not many Great Coxwell residents remember VE Day.  But, seventy-five years ago, Ted Nieass, (Sandcroft), was a twenty-year old RAF pilot as the war in Europe came to an end.  What were his memories of VE Day?  Our investigative reporter went to find out!  It turns out that Ted was the other side of the Atlantic on 8th May 1945.  His WW2 story begins three years earlier, when at the age of just 18, he volunteered to become an RAF pilot and was summoned to Lords Cricket Ground, of all places, to be inducted into the RAF.  Amusingly, Ted remembers being put up, eight to a room, in commandeered luxury flats in Maida Vale.  London Zoo was their temporary cookhouse…The wild animals had packed their bags and been evacuated to Whipsnade Zoo, apart from the monkeys, who remained!

Roll forward to November 1944, and Ted arrives in Terrel, Texas, to begin his flying training at the No 1 British Flying Training School.  At this stage in the war, all flying training was overseas, either Canada, the USA or Southern Rhodesia.  He began his training on Stearman PT-18 bi-planes, and then graduated to the Harvard, (AT-6) Trainer.  His instructors were all American commercial pilots.  (One of the other students at Terrel was the actor, Robert Hardy.)  Ted’s life in Terrel was wonderful.  The RAF aircrew were thoroughly spoilt by the local population.  Indeed, the town still keep in contact with their Allied guests and publish an annual BFTS newsletter!

Ted recalls that VE Day was not hugely celebrated in Texas, for understandable reasons. The war in the Pacific was still raging in May 1945, and the US were taking heavy casualties in that theatre.  Ted returned to the UK on the Queen Mary on his 21st birthday in July 1945, and married Joan the following year.

When the glut of pilots subsided after the war, Ted went on to become a jet fighter pilot in the fifties and sixties, finishing his flying career leading an RAF training team with the Kenya Air Force in the mid-seventies, before a posting to RMCS Shrivenham and retiring from the service in 1979. He then spent six years as Bursar at Christs Hospital Girls' School in Hertford finally coming home to Great Coxwell in 1986.  He was soon persuaded to become Parish Clerk; a job that lasted for thirteen years, while Joan was WI Treasurer during ten of them.
Ted has one daughter, Jenny, three grandsons, Christopher, Martyn and Jonathan, all in their forties and one great granddaughter, Emilia Rose, Jon's child, born last September. 

Friday 11th May – 75th Anniversary of VE Day

Great Coxwell marked the 75th Anniversary of VE Day on Friday the best we could, given the continuing lockdown restrictions.  Musical entertainment at the bottom of the village kicked off with Nick Warr playing the Last Post and then Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ brilliantly on his saxophone.  This was followed by Nancy Smith, playing the National Anthem and then ‘the Can-Can’ very assuredly from her improvised stage – her Dad’s 1943 EAC ‘Matador’ towing lorry, (once used to tow artillery guns to the battlefield).

At the top of the village, Lynette Stulting and her band…more like an orchestra!... played Vera Lynn’s famous song, ‘We’ll meet again’, followed by ‘A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’.  It was hugely appreciated by the socially distanced audience.

Below are some of the video recordings, and some photographs of village residents taken from Friday evening …..

(The Last Post) - Nick
(In the Mood) - Nick
(Can Can) – Nancy - (Offenbach's Infernal Galop)
(We’ll Meet Again) Lynette Stulting Band 

Great Coxwell Community Fund.  

The Great Coxwell Community Fund is managed by its Trustees, Pam Smith, Pauline Durham, Sylvia Athawes and Annabelle Zinovieff.  It is available for village community events, but also, in extremis, for those in difficulties who have tried all other avenues for support.  If you are struggling and need a little help, please contact Pam Smith in the first instance.
  
Pam Smith – 01367 240233 or email on Chris Smith [email protected]

That’s it for this week.  At last, we heard some good news last night about the Government’s plans to end the lockdown.  Hurrah!  What is clear from the last two months is how the village has pulled together, how we have all looked out for each other, and how we have helped and cared for each other in adversity.  My thanks to everyone for all their kindness and consideration so far.  In a funny way, Great Coxwell feels a closer-knit community now.  One positive from the lockdown.

Stay Safe,

Best regards,

Mandy xx
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Important Update

Hopefully, you will have seen the Additional Newsletter posted yesterday on the village’s VE Day celebrations.  It has been brought to our notice that the arrangements as they were described could contravene the Covid 19 Social Distancing rules. This note seeks to re-enforce those rules and make sure that we continue to keep safe.

What are we doing in Great Coxwell?
With the need for social distancing limiting what can be done to mark this event, the following two small events will take place from home:

1) Location: Driveway opposite 'Olde Willows' at the bottom of the village.
Time:  5.30pm.
Event:  Nick Gow will be playing the saxophone and Nancy Smith will be playing the oboe from home.
Music.  ‘In the mood’ (Glen Miller),’ The Last Post’ and ‘the National Anthem’.

2) Location: ‘Stonevale’ on the T junction at the top of the village.
Time:  6pm
Event:  Lynette Stulting (piano) and her daughter, Katherine (violin) will be joined by Russ (guitar) and son Oliver (drums) as well as Ken and Richard to play ‘We’ll Meet Again’, (Dame Vera Lynn)

Unfortunately, it would not be appropriate to gather together or visit both performances so please enjoy either event if you can from your own home.

Let’s make sure this virus does not stop us remembering and celebrating VE Day.

Mandy Burns.  Xxx
(Great Coxwell Support Group)

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From Lynette - we are going to have another Great Coxwell member joining Katherine and I,  in the form of Richard Benwell!  He will stand on his side of the wall with another microphone.  We are going to perform Louis Armstrong's "What a wonderful world".  (Of course he did not write it, but he is famous for it...)

We are going to play it three times, if people feel like joining in for the third one - here are the words.


Lyrics for "What a wonderful world"

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them blue before me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Or also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands, saying "How do you do?"
They're really saying, I love you
I hear babies crying, I watch them them grow
They'll learn much more and I'll never know
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself
What a wonderful world