Passion for brass paid off with career change (From The Northern Echo)

Passion for brass paid off with career change

10:47am Tuesday 9th February 2010 in

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MUSICIANS performing alongside some of the world’s biggest stars are using instruments made by a company that started life in a garden workshop.

Brass instrument maker Geneva Professional Instruments was started in September 2000 by Tim Oldroyd.

Now those using the instruments, produced in Skelton, near Saltburn, North Yorkshire, include Malcolm Stracchan, who performs with Amy Winehouse and Jamiroquai, Steve Parry, who performs with Corrine Bailey Rae, and Chris Storr and John Stott, who perform with Jools Holland.

Mr Oldroyd, who gave up a steady job selling instruments to launch his own manufacturing business, is looking for investment to expand the firm, which provides work for seven people, to a facility employing up to 20 craftsmen.

Mr Oldroyd said: “While I was still at school I started to do instrument repairs and much later that has led to manufacturing.

“I bit the bullet from the very first day, that was my source of income.

“You can’t do it half-heartedly and you only have to make one or two instruments to have a tidy living each month.”

Mr Oldroyd was always confident that the service he offered would prove popular as he built up a reputation.

He said: “I knew that one day it would get big, because of what we put into the instruments.

“They are not mass-produced, there is a great deal of passion that goes into them. If you put the integrity in, then it comes out the other end.”

In a competive industry driven by word of mouth, the company is doing well, and after financing the business’s early expansion himself, Mr Oldroyd is now looking for outside investment.

He said: “The orders we have got could be three or four times the size, and we could have 20 people working for us. I would like to teach people to do this.

“There is the market out their.

Every single village used to have a brass band. Just in our area between Skelton and Billingham there are probably 20 town bands and another 20 Salvation Army ones.

“There are about 2,000 brass bands in the country, then there is the US and Scandanavia. The potential is massive.”

The instruments can also be refined to an individual customer’s needs.

Mr Oldroyd said: “We don’t sell to shops. We have guys who go to the customers, and we make people feel they are buying something special.

“There isn’t an instrument that leaves our workshop that I personally am not satisfied with.

“Anyone who chooses to play Geneva is guaranteed that passion and finesse has been poured into every instrument.”

Mr Oldroyd started out as a trombone, then cornet player in the Malton Salvation Army Band at the age of 12. He has gone on to play with some of the North’s finest bands, including Kirkbymoorside, Yorkshire Imperial Band, North Skelton (British Steel) and Newcastle Brown Ale.

He is also an established conductor, and for the past four years has been conducting the Shepherd Group Band, in York, and the newly-reformed North Skelton Band, formerly Langbaugh Brass.