Remembrance Sunday Pop-up Concert, Sumner Esplanade – 12th November 2023

Remembrance Sundays and Anzac Days are important engagements for Brass Bands throughout the English speaking world, and Sumner Silver Band is proud to play at these events to honour those who served, and often made the ultimate sacrifice, in order that we can enjoy the freedoms and traditions we have.

Armistice Day itself is on the 11th November, referencing the date and time at which the ceasefire which ended World War One (the ‘Great War’) came into effect - the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month - 11:00, 11th November 1918. Unlike in Australia and New Zealand, though, where our Anzac Day commemoration is a public holiday and is always marked on 25th April, in Great Britain local services of remembrance normally take place on the nearest Sunday to 11th November.

Our programme began with the Last Post, a minute’s silence then the Rouse, played by our principle corner player Chris Hollis-Locke, followed by God Defend New Zealand. We then played a programme made up primarily of marches and hymns.

The performance took place on a part of the Esplanade where once a band rotunda stood, close to the memorial to the Sumner men who died in South Africa during the Boer War, and just along from the row of street lamps each of which represents an Anzac battle honour from conflicts of the twentieth century, one of which can be seen to the right of the image below.