Venues & stages
Fanfare de l’Automne
- Type
- Brass band (retired musicians)
- Address
- Salle de l’Ancien Stand, Blonay
The Amicale Fanfare de l’Automne (AFA) is a brass band from Blonay founded in 1980, made up of some thirty retired musicians, with an average age of about 74. Because its members are available during the day, it can play where an ordinary society could not. Long focused on brass, it has also welcomed woodwinds since 2022. It rehearses on Wednesday afternoons at the Salle de l’Ancien Stand in Blonay, and prepares a programme of varied and popular music.
The Amicale Fanfare de l’Automne
A band of the golden age (1980)
On the initiative of the musician Samuel Barbey, supported by the councillor and musician Jean-Pierre Nicolet, about ten members met on 7 May 1980 for a first rehearsal. The ranks have since grown to twenty or thirty musicians, from the Lake Geneva shore, from Grandvaux to the Lower Valais by way of the Fribourg Veveyse. Their distinctive feature: they are retired, hence available during the day, which allows the band performances that ordinary societies cannot provide.
Concerts and friendship
After ten years under Raymond Pasche, the band changed conductor in 2023. It performs at its annual November concert, at the Grande Salle de Cojonnex in Blonay, gives serenade concerts in the region’s care homes in June and July, animates one Saturday of the Vevey folklore market and the Wednesday of the Brent fair, and organises the canton’s annual Gathering of Seniors’ Bands, which it launched itself.
Its members have all played, or still play, in various music societies of the region, and many are former military-band musicians. At the Automne they find an atmosphere that combines music and friendship, and gladly recall that music keeps both the body and the neurons in shape.