One of many works composed for school musicians during my teaching career, this piece was written for the Handmade Parade, the annual community arts festival in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. It was later performed at the Square Chapel in Halifax as part of a school concert.

Scored for wind instruments and djembe drums, the work draws inspiration from West African drumming traditions, combining rhythmic energy with evolving melodic and motivic material. Designed for young and relatively inexperienced performers, it was intended to be both accessible and rewarding to play.

My strongest memory of the project is the journey to the performance itself: a group of thirty or forty students carrying instruments and drums along the canal towpath from Mytholmroyd to Hebden Bridge. We must have been quite a sight - and certainly impossible to miss.