Woolston Brass with Music Director Tyme Marsters Photo: www.heatheranddoug.com
Todd Turner and the band thought it was better to wait.
Like so many other Christchurch music groups, the Woolston Brass clubrooms were damaged in the city's quakes.
The band has been able to keep operating in its Woolston home of more than a hundred years, but it recognised at some point it would need to rebuild it.
However, speaking with RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump at the start of a fundraising drive, Turner, the band's managing director, says it recognises other things. People's homes, for example, were a higher priority.
Instead, the band - based in the eastern side of town, the side hardest hit by the February quake of 2011 - focussed on doing its bit for community morale.
Now the time has come to focus on its own digs, Turner hopes that approach will pay off as it asks the community to help it raise the $4.5 million it needs to properly rebuild its bandrooms.
In fact, the hope is the bandrooms will flourish as a "community music hub" for other groups.
As Turner points out, while brass bands (Woolston Brass actually has three bands) need a good rehearsal space, they don't need it all the time.
The band has a fundraising gig, performing show tunes at The Piano in Christchurch on 1 November.
In the meantime, Turner says he's encouraged the band's decision to stay put has gone down well with most of the neighbours.
A brass band can make a lot of noise, but to the folk of Woolston and beyond, that noise is music to most people's ears.
