Northamptonshire Orchestral Winds had its humble beginnings with its main band, which consisted of only 9 players, on Tuesday 11^th October 2005.

Andrew Bassey (NOW's Musical Director and founder) previously has extensive experience as a professional bassoonist, teacher and conductor of bands, orchestras, and wind ensembles both in England and South Africa. After leaving Northampton Concert Band (Andrew was there MD from October 2003  to July 2005) a number of players asked him to form a new ensemble that would be led by his professional expertise; NOW was born.

NOW has a simple yet ambitious aim; to educate people in the art of wind band performance using mainly (but not exclusively) music written by living English composers and to have a very good time at the same time; NOW members can be involved in making all this reality.

Then we needed a website and a logo. Ian Facer (trumpet) volunteered and begun work on our first website and by December 2005 we became part of cyberspace.  Ian launched the present site in January 2007. In October 2007, Simon, a friend of Andrew's for several years, and a professional web designer was approached to take over the site after Ian stepped down, and has since spent time in getting the site fully up to date.

While the website was under construction work was underway for a logo. Many members contributed but Jo Burge (clarinet) had the final inspiration. Lucy Hacker (flute) enlisted the help of a friend, Barry Cheney, who is a professional graphic designer to create the finished product you see today.

While in the logo creating process we were playing around with letterheads and the fun and jokes of the Mighty Music publishers began to flow.  There is an underlying message if you read between the lines regarding our (and our audiences) attitudes to the music we play.

Planning for NOW's Celebration Inaugural Concert Tour came next with the production at CTC Corby of our first CD - 'CELEBRATION', in which Jemima Clarke  has her debut with us as violin soloist in Calvin Custer's excellent arrangement of John William's evocative theme to Schindler's List.

Andrew did not want NOW to perform in the usual black with its austere and funeral look. We wanted a fresh colourful look that which  would help our audiences feel more comfortable with us, especially as we would be playing music that would be on the whole unfamiliar, and let us be recognisable as the exciting groundbreaking ensemble we are. Andrew looked to the beautiful and optimistic colours of the morning sunrise; colours of joy and hope...

The inspiration for the colours came from Matthew's (Andrew's eldest son) Son-rise programme; a groundbreaking child led parent run therapy for children (or adults) challenge by autism. Though love no limits put on the autistic child.  For Andrew, Son-rise's philosophy of having joy in the present and great hope for the future coupled with the necessary energy, excitement and enthusiasm needed to succeed seemed to hold great resonance with starting a new band playing new unexplored music.