Music for Youth

**Unfortunately, due to the band being made ‘homeless’ and still being unable to find suitable space, the Music for Youth Programme has had to be put on hold for the foreseeable future.**

The Music for Youth (MFY) programme initiated from an idea that Noel Barr Snr had to develop our brass players and give better brass tuition to the young members of our band.

The idea saw the light of day in 2000, when the MFY project was set up with an initial student body of ten. Today we have 100 members. At the start the only discipline taught was brass, ie tubas(we call them basses), trombones, cornets etc. It became apparent that there were youngsters interested in other disciplines too and, it was decided to try to provide some of these at reasonable and affordable tuition rates.

Today we teach Brass, Percussion, Piano, Guitar, Speech and Drama and the Theory of Music. Besides our base at the bandroom in Strabane, we outreach our services to young people at Ardara, Glenties, Ballybofey and Letterkenny.
We have been accredited as an examination centre for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and each year an examiner from the Board comes to our bandroom to take the grades examinations.

Our pass rate is very high, with quite a number of students receiving Distinctions and Merits. This year the examinations are held over 3 different time periods. There are two sets of exams; April and May followed by the Autumn term in November. We wish all our students the very best of luck for these exams!