Thank you to Les Goldman and The Band Upstairs

At our show in Pateley Bridge during the Sandhouse Stompers Coast to Coast Mardi Gras, we met amateur musician Les Goldman, who generously offered to donate the proceeds from his band’s next show to the Favela Brass project.

Last weekend the band, called The Band Upstairs and based in Guiseley near Leeds, played on the bandstand in Ilkley to entertain shoppers at the weekend Continental Market. The band played from 14:00 to 15:30 and raised altogether £98.40 for Favela Brass.

Thank you ever so much to the members of The Band Upstairs – yet another act of kindness on the part of fellow musicians to help the project on its way!

#FavelaBrass2016

With one year to go before the Rio 2016 olympics, we have an announcement to make, and would appreciate help in sharing it with as many people as possible:

The main objective of the Favela Brass project for the next 12 months is to perform at the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympics

Here are 5 reasons why we think that our children deserve a shot:

  1. To prepare for and play at the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 olympics would be an incredible experience for the children and provide an excellent focus for the project.
  2. Olympic opening ceremonies represent and reflect the best all sections of a city’s society. Our children would be excellent ambassadors for the favelas of Santa Teresa.
  3. Favela Brass is a music school for Brazilian children, founded by a British musician in the time between the London 2012 Olympics and Rio 2016 and funded in large part by donations in the UK. In this way it provides a bridge between the two games.
  4. FB represents something innovative and new that is happening in Rio. We are mixing Rio’s percussion tradition with New Orleans’ brass tradition to create a style all of our own.
  5. The exposure that playing at the opening ceremony would generate for us would raise the profile of the project, helping us to continue our work into the future.

Our strategy for getting ourselves included in the opening ceremony is to:

  • Publicize the project and our desire to participate, through regular public performances, our own events and a series of short documentary videos about our journey on social media, all brought together under the #FavelaBrass2016 hasthag, and
  • Try to establish direct contact with the artistic directors, organizers and sponsors of the opening ceremony.

For the reasons outlined above we think our children deserve a shot, however we are under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead. This is an extremely ambitious goal for such a new project, which will take serious amounts of planning, a lot of hard work and more than a pinch of good luck. If anyone out there thinks they can help us, please get in touch.

Coast to Coast Mardi Gras! (2)

The Sandhouse Stompers Coast to Coast Mardi Gras was a huge success. As well as raising a game-changing £3,747 for Favela Brass, it was also a great opportunity for the project to make new connections, and to renew existing ones.

Over 9 days the band (pictured below) travelled 120 miles from Morecambe to Whitby, each day walking for 6-8 hours before playing their hearts out at the next local venue on the route. All through the trip a continuous stream of donations came in from family, friends and amazed locals (it’s not every day that a nine-piece band turns up in your local pub and starts belting out New Orleans jazz!)

Nothing that I could write here could adequately thank the musicians for what they have done on behalf of the children in the Favela Brass Project, and especially trombonist Stuart Garside for conceiving, planning, and organizing the whole thing. I will leave the final word to Stuart:

“A big thank you to everyone who has donated, there have been some very generous amounts of money donated and it will make a huge difference to a lot of young people. Thank you to the venues who made us really welcome. Thank you to everyone who came along and supported, especially those who traveled long distances to see us, but most of all thank you to an incredible group of talented musicians who really suffered a lot of physical pain, dug deep and put on 10 high-energy shows in 9 days. Not once did anyone complain. You are good people.”


The Sandhouse Stompers: Paul Grady, Neil Morley, Stuart Garside, Gareth Smith, James Stretton, Mark Kerrigan, Rowena Smith and Mark Ellis


The Sandhouse Stompers performing at The One-Eyed Rat in Ripon.


Stuart Garside (centre) navigating the group across the moors.

Coast to Coast Mardi Gras!

Favela Brass has great friends.

From the 21st to the 30th of July, the following 9 musicians will be walking 120 miles from the West coast to the East coast of the UK, playing gigs at each of the 9 towns they will stop in along the way, all in order to raise money for Favela Brass:

Mark Ellis (saxophone)
Stuart Garside (trombone)
Tom Ashe (trumpet)
Paul Grady (trumpet)
Neil Morley (trumpet)
Mark Kerrigan (drums)
Gareth Smith (trumpet)
Rowena Smith (trombone)
James Stretton (tuba)

During the walk we will be busking, selling T-shirts and inviting cash donations from the public at shows. However we also want to use the event as a way to stimulate our existing network of friends and family, those who already recognise the value and potential of our program, to support us by donating monthly.

We have calculated that the basic running costs of the school at its present capacity of 30 children five days a week are around £300 per month, which means that with a running donation of £10 monthly you can provide a child with long-term, potentially life-changing, access to regular high-quality instrumental music tuition (though we are, of course, very grateful for all levels of donations, monthly or one-off.)

To make a contribution please use the “donate” button below, checking the “make this donation recurring” box if you want to become a monthly donor. All monthly donors (including our existing donors) who donate £5 or more per month and those who make an individual donation of £15 or more will receive a high quality Favela Brass T-Shirt (once donations are confirmed we will send an e-mail to confirm the size/colour/postal address – we ship worldwide too).


In addition to helping the Favela Brass project financially, the walk is also shaping up to be pretty darn cool musically. Favela Brass seeks to mix the New Orleans brass band tradition with the samba school tradition of Rio de Janeiro and that is going to be reflected in the music on the walk – the band will be playing New Orleans “Second Line” brass band music along with some serious samba drumming grooves as well!

Our itinerary:

Thank you Paul!

Yesterday the children said goodbye to Paul-Edouard Gardelle, French singer and guitarist and Favela Brass teacher since 2014. Paul lived down the road in the favela and is now moving back to his home town of Toulouse.



As well as giving singing and percussion lessons with the kids, Paul helped us out lots at the Curry Clube and other fundraising events, playing guitar, singing and also making large amounts of caipirinhas!



Needless to say Paul will be missed very much by everyone at the project and also in the community, where he was very popular and ran his own samba events in partnership with the locals.

Thanks so much Paul for helping us get the project off the ground. Your contribution will always be remembered and we wish you best of luck back in Toulouse.

New T-Shirts!

All of the children involved in the Queen’s Birthday Party organised by the British Consulate-General received a T-shirt with the logos of The British School, Rio de Janeiro, the Love GREAT Britain campaign and Favela Brass. Kindly, Andy Casterton, director of music at The British School, had enough T-Shirts made for the rest of the children at the project that didn’t get to play on Thursday to have one as well. They received them in the lesson yesterday. Thank you Andy Casterton and The British School!

The Queens Birthday Party (2)

Yesterday the children played alongside children from The British School at the celebrations for the Queen’s Birthday put on by the British Consulate-general in Rio de Janeiro. They absolutely loved the experience of being whisked off in an air-conditioned bus to the prestigious Clube dos Caiçaras and performing alongside and getting to know the children from the British School (the night ended with them singing together on the bus back). Despite the pressure, the children held their nerve and played and sang beautifully:

Being invited to play the national anthem at the Queen’s Birthday has given the project a huge boost in terms of the children’s motivation to practice, in terms of publicizing our project and in terms of giving us a concrete musical challenge to really get our teeth into over the last few weeks. So thank you ever so much to the British Consulate-general for the invite, to the British Ambassador, Alex Ellis, and to the British Consul, Jonathan Dunn, for his very kind words about the project in his speech. A big thank you also to Naira De Almeida Prado and Caroline Luymar for coming to our community and making the link with our project, and to Ana Beatriz Moller for looking after us on the day.

As they say in Brazil “Deu tudo certo” (it all worked out great).

The Queen’s Birthday Party

Our students have been invited by the British Consulate-general in Rio de Janeiro to play the British national anthem at their party to celebrate the Queen’s birthday tomorrow, together with a choir from The British School Rio de Janeiro.

Yesterday we had a final joint rehearsal with the students from the British School at their Botafogo campus. It was a great opportunity for the children and staff of the schools to get to know each other before the show and a fantastic day out for the FB kids. Unfortunately (and understandably) we can’t publish images of the children from The British School, but we did get this video of the Favela Brass students playing our 4-part arrangement of God Save the Queen from memory:

Our kids have raised their game for this show. They have practiced day and night and developed the kind of ensemble sound that you would expect from much more experienced musicians. Tomorrow we’ll have the unpredictable element of nerves to contend with, but whatever happens I’m immensely proud of these young musicians and as far as I’m concerned they have already done themselves, their project and their community proud.

Many thanks to the British Consulate for the invitation and to Andy Casterton, director of music at the British School, for making us feel so very welcome yesterday.

St. George’s Day Show

St. George is the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro and is also closely associated with samba music. He seems to be a very popular saint here – so much so that the 23rd of April is a public holiday in Rio. On Thursday local restaurant ABCD held a traditional feijoãda and samba party to mark St. George’s day this year and invited us down to play. We played a 25-minute set of brass and percussion to a very animated packed house composed mainly of the families of the children:

As British readers will be aware, St. George is also the patron saint of England. For that reason it was a nice touch that the event was also attended by representatives of the British Consulate-General in Rio de Janeiro Naira de Almeida Prado and Caroline Luymar.

Many thanks to Claudio from Restaurante ABCD for the invite and for feeding us all, and congratulations to the children and staff on a great show!

Bindu Mathur

Bindu Mathur was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada and worked for 10 years in London as a TV producer/director, making science and history documentaries for the BBC, Discovery and Channel 4. She also made videos for international NGOs and has filmed in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and South America. Resident in Rio de Janeiro since 2007 she is the owner of the award-winning Casa Beleza B&B in Santa Teresa, where she lives with her husband and two children. She is a long-time collaborator with Favela Brass including making films for the project. Her children also studied at the project.


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