15th November 2009 - Brass in Concert
Adjudicators: Nigel Boddice MBE & Derek Broadbent (Music), Alan Fernie & Chris Wormald (Entertainment), Sheona White (Soloist).
Venue: The Sage, Gateshead
At the beginning of the year, the only contests we were scheduled to take part in were the Yorkshire Area, Grand Shield, Cambridge Masters and English Nationals. We had scheduled a set of three concerts on consecutive weekends during October and November. In June, when we were invited to take part in this contest, we had already qualified for the British Open and National Finals, and had withdrawn from the English Nationals. Amazingly, the three consecutive concerts turned out to fill the three weekends between the Albert Hall and Brass in Concert.
Given this situation, we were never going to be knocking on the door of the top prizes at Brass in Concert, and we were always going to try our best, and see where we came.
Following the contests at the British Open and National Finals, we had to spend a week preparing our programme for the Frank Renton concert at Yeadon Town Hall (the first of the three). We finally got to start looking at rehearsing our Brass in Concert programme just three weeks before the event took place.
Behind the scenes, David Roberts and Richard Glascodine (one of our cornets) had been hard at work sorting out our programme. Richard arranged two pieces, a Barbara Streisand hit arrangement of 'Something’s Coming’ and 'Tunes’ – a medley of three folk tunes by the Leeds-based Kate Rusby Band. David also arranged for music to be sent over from his old friend Torstein Aagaard-Nielsen from Norway, and commissioned an arrangement of 'The Jazz Police’ from someone he knew at work.
Our final programme was:
- Something’s Coming, Bernstein arr Randy Waldman, scored by Richard Glascodine
- The Jazz Police, Gordon Goodwin arr MacKenzie
- Rocks, Torstein Aagaard-Nielsen
- La Califfa, Morricone
- Humming Chorus, Puccini
- Tunes, comprising Ann Maguire’s Silver Wedding (John McCusker), Waiting for Janet (Andy Cutting), * Shake a Leg (John McCusker) arr Richard Glascodine
La Califfa, originally scored as a soprano cornet solo was performed as a duet with Paul Argyle on Soprano Cornet and Lucy Rhodes singing. Lucy’s sister Sophie used to play baritone with the band and Lucy performed on our Christmas CD, but had never done anything like this before. She was somewhat apprehensive playing percussion for the other pieces.
We felt our performance was reasonable, but it lacked the polish of other bands. This is probably down to our inexperience at this kind of contest at this level. We weren’t even aware that our players could walk on from either side of the stage until the first band were playing!
When the results were announced we were way down in tenth place.
The full results of the contest were:
(Position, Band, Conductor, Draw, Music/Entertainment Points, Total Points)
1. Fodens (Garry Cutt) (9) 198/54 = 252
2. Grimethorpe Colliery (James Gourlay) (12) 195/56 = 251
3. Cory (Dr Robert Childs) (5) 193/57 = 250
4. Brighouse & Rastrick (Richard Evans) (10) 191/59 = 250
5. Reg Vardy (Ray Farr) (8) 189/58 = 247
6. Leyland (Jason Katsikaris) (7) 190/55 = 245
7. Fountain City (Dr Joseph Parasi) (3) 186/54 = 240
8. Fairey (Philip Chalk) (11) 185/52 = 237
9. Desford (Stephen Roberts) (6) 183/52 = 235
10. Rothwell Temperance (David Roberts) (2) 188/46 = 234
11. Flowers (Paul Holland) (4) 182/48 = 230
12. Carlton Main Frickley (Russell Gray) (1) 184/44 = 228
So the result had us seventh on music, but second to last on entertainment. This result shows our inexperience, and the lack of time we had to prepare. We need to try harder next year, especially in the way we present the programme.
Thanks go to:
- Steve Clayton for covering the Flugel seat.
- Roger Clayton for covering second horn.
- Dai Hale for helping out at the last minute.
- Lucy Rhodes for singing with us and playing percussion at the back.
The band are looking forward to a nice rest over Christmas, before rehearsals start in earnest for the Area Contest next year. We’re also looking to record another CD during January.
Tim Sawyer
Percussion
22nd November 2009
