An iconic Wirral concert band is celebrating its 25th anniversary by performing in Heswall Hall this October.

Formed 25 years ago by two friends, the late Les Stevenson and John Booth, the Heswall Band has gone from strength to strength.

Now Heswall Concert Band are celebrating their anniversary with a play day and concert.

The Play Day will take place on Saturday, October 2, inviting all woodwind, brass and percussion players to join the band with a full day of rehearsal and a concert performance the next day.

The repertoire will have a definite space travel theme including music from Apollo 13, Halo and Star Trek, alongside favourites like The Greatest Showman and Chocolat.

Time travel will come in a newly commissioned piece from the rising star composer Grace-Evangeline Mason, who composed music for this year’s BBC Proms.

Sparked by the theme of friendship over the band’s quarter century of existence, it takes its title and inspiration from a poem The Safe-Kept Memory by American poet Sara Teasdale.

Grace told the Globe: “It was wonderful to have been commissioned to write this work to mark the 25th anniversary of the Heswall Concert Band, and to be able to celebrate with this piece all that is special about making music within a long-standing community such as this.”

Vicky Mercer, the band’s principal flautist and secretary, added: “It is a very beautiful and slightly mysterious piece of music, like a walk in the dark woods. Actually, it made me cry the first time I heard it.”