The Manx Youth Band was founded in 1970 by the late T J "Jim" Crosbie MBE. Now under the baton of musical director Ian Clague MBE, the Manx Youth Band has nurtured some of the very best young musicians in the Isle of Man and provided generations of islanders with the chance to forge lifelong friendships and memories from their association with music.
The organisation has developed a reputation for excellence, as shown by its success in the annual Manx Music Festival and various off-Island contests, the highlight of these being the winning of the Daily Mirror Challenge Trophy at Belle Vue, Manchester in 1978. The band can also boast 5 winners of the prestigious biannual competition, Young Musician of Mann, including the very first winner, Jonathan Kneale in 1983.
The Manx Youth Band has performed with some of the greatest names in the classical music and entertainment worlds including Roy Castle, Ted Heath, Peter Skellern, the Band of the Scots Guards, the Royal Marines and Royal Artillery and, in more recent years, the Irish classical soprano Margaret Keys. The Manx Youth Band has also performed for members of the Royal Family including Her Majesty the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh at a private luncheon during their visit to the Island in 1989.
The band has made several continental tours, notably to Norway (1975), Switzerland (1981), West Berlin (1984), Holland (1980 & 1988) and the Czech Republic in 1998. In October 1999, the band travelled to Waterford in Southern Ireland as guests of the City of Waterford Band and, in August 2001, the Youth Band and Manx Concert Brass undertook a Concert Tour of Northern Italy, the first time a combined tour had been undertaken. The most ambitious tour, however, was undertaken in 1990 when the band carried out a concert tour of the North Island of New Zealand for 3 weeks.
As a public subscription band, donations are key to the organisation's success, and in 2011 one of our most ambitious fundraising projects paid off as the band completed the purchase of its first permanent home. It was Jim Crosbie's dedication to teaching brass to young students in the early 1970s that has led to the success of the Manx Youth Band and it is in honour of this dedication that we decided to name the building The Jim Crosbie Memorial Bandroom.
From this base, the organisation runs a youth band, a training band and a senior band, providing free tuition to over 70 players.