After months of planning, Foden’s Band set off on ‘the trip of a lifetime’ as featured artists at the 2024 Jeju International Wind Ensemble Festival, this year held between the 7th - 16th August.

The annual festival, being staged for the 29th time on the beautiful South Korean island of Jeju, is one of the leading events of its type in the world. The festival has welcomed many globally renowned wind ensembles over its 29 years of existence. However, for a brass band to be invited to perform at the festival is a rarity. The Cory Band were the first to do so in 2022 and their successful appearance paved the way for another top British brass ensemble to light up the festival this year in the form of Foden’s. The advent of British style brass bands performing at the Jeju Festival has undoubtedly been greatly aided by the two most recent artistic directors of the event; firstly euphonium superstar, Steven Mead, and now the leading international trumpet soloist, Jens Lindemann.

The journey to the far east is, of course, a fairly lengthy one and after 24 hours of travelling, Foden’s Band members arrived at their hotel on the evening of August 7th.

After a day of acclimatising to the extreme South Korean heat and exploring Jeju city, the band’s first performance was at the opening concert of the Jeju Festival which took place in the stunning auditorium of the Jeju Arts Centre. Foden’s appeared alongside the Jeju Wind Orchestra, the Barcelona Clarinet Players and the Jeju Union Male Chorus in front of a terrifically enthusiastic audience of around 1000 people. The opening concert was also recorded by National TV to be transmitted at a later date . The extremely warm reception afforded to the band and its soloists wherever they performed became one of the standout highlights of the trip. At this opening event, Foden’s were also delighted to accompany the festival’s current artistic director (and one of Foden’s vice presidents), Jens Lindemann, in a performance of William Himes’ beautiful setting of ‘Amazing Grace.’