ILKLEY Baptist Church was full to overflowing for the Two Rivers Concert Band Remembrance Concert on the morning of Saturday, November 10. This free concert was organised with the support of Ilkley Town Council and given as part of Ilkley’s celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1.

The centrepiece of the concert was a performance of “Armistice”, a brand new work by Scottish violinist and composer Thoren Ferguson. His aim was to have musicians from all round the world play the work during Remembrance weekend, to create a Concert for Cooperation in the cause of peace. Forty-five diverse groups contributed to the project, ranging from string trio to a Chinese music ensemble. Performances took place as far west as Washington DC, as far north as Shetland and as far south as Pretoria in South Africa.

The Two Rivers performance uncovered a very surprising and special local connection. The version of Armistice for concert band was arranged by London-based musician Clare Salters. When she watched the recording on-line of the Ilkley performance, she was amazed to see that it had taken place in Ilkley Baptist Church, the church where her great-grandfather, William Knapman Still, had been Minister.

Reverend Still was too old for active service in the 1st World War but did serve as a forces chaplain at one point during the war. His notes, which his great-granddaughter still has in her possession, record his horror at seeing the extent of the war graves in France for the first time. But there is also a more light-hearted story of his wartime experience. While he was abroad, his wife, Elisabeth, sent him a Christmas pudding. But by the time it reached him it was completely inedible. So he threw it overboard on the boat journey home, and told his wife that it had ‘gone down very well’. He and Elisabeth continued to live in Ilkley after he retired.

Clare’s grandfather, Ronald Still, grew up in Ilkley. He qualified as a doctor from Leeds Medical School and served as a medical missionary in China from 1935 to 1945 (during which time he and his young family were interned in a Japanese concentration camp) and again after WW2. His letters home to his parents, as well as containing accounts of gory wartime surgery and maintaining complex games of correspondence chess, were often full of thanks to the congregation of Ilkley Baptist Church for the medical supplies that they had sent out as it was difficult to get supplies locally, particularly in rural China where he was working. For example - on visiting another hospital in March 1937 he noted that the bandages there were vastly inferior to the high quality ones that were being supplied to his own hospital from Ilkley. “Coming to Taiyuan has made me value more than ever the work that the Ilkley folk are doing in winding such good bandages… our bandages at Choutsun are very much better than the ones that are being used here… You have no idea what a difference it makes from everybody’s point of view – patients’ nurses’ and doctors’.”

Clare commented: “I was really touched to see that the first public performance of my arrangement of Armistice took place in the town my grandfather loved so much and in the very church where my great grandfather served for many years as Minister.”

Les Goldman, chairman of the Two Rivers Bands added: “We were really proud to play a part in the iPlay4Peace Concert4Cooperation project and delighted to hear of our link with Clare and her family’s history. It has shown the power of music to connect people all across the world.”

The Remembrance Concert raised £297 for the medical relief charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The next Two Rivers Concert Band performance is their Winter Concert. It will also take place at Ilkley Baptist Church on Saturday, December 8 at 7.30pm. Admission is free. It is part of the Ilkley Arts Festival. All profit from this concert will also go to MSF, one of the three charities supported by the Band.