Help
Towcester Studio Band – Spring Concert alert!
| Author: Kevin Hawkins | Published: 19th March 2019 18:53 |
On Saturday April 6th 2019 the Band returns to its spiritual home, St Lawrence Church, for a concert themed ‘ Family Entertainment’.
How time flies! It doesn’t seem many weeks since the Band was busily engaged with all the usual Christmas activity, and here we are three months into the new year and our first Towcester concert of the year is rapidly approaching! On Saturday April 6th 2019 the Band returns to its spiritual home, St Lawrence Church, for a concert themed ‘ Family Entertainment’.
There will be something for everyone and we are delighted to announce that the children from Towcester CofE Primary school will be joining the Band on the concert platform again. They are a very young talented group of singers and we look forward to listening to them again this year.
The concert commences at 7:30pm, tickets are available on the door and are priced £7.50. The ticket price includes light refreshments.
Please do come along and support your local Band and its guest performers from the school.
I’ll take this opportunity to provide a brief update on the Band’s year so far! Traditionally the first part of the year is dominated by key competitions or contests as they are known in the world of Brass Bands.
We regularly support the Oxfordshire Brass Band Association Winter Contest, held in February at Woodstock. Typically most Bands will use the contest to try out the test piece for the National Qualifying contest, but this year our MD had a crafty plan! As it is an own choice competition we played a different piece called Music for a Festival. Sadly the adjudicator wasn’t too keen on our rendition of the piece and so no podium finish this year. In 2018 we were placed first.
So onto the next challenge ….. The second Saturday in March is always the National Regional qualifying contest, where the top two or three Bands in each section progress to the National Finals, which are held later in the year. TSB are currently playing in Section 3 of the Midlands Region and the venue this year was Kenilworth School.
The Test Piece was Gustav Holst’s Fist Suite in Eb. The work comprises three movements, all with lyrical catchy tunes! It is not the most technically challenging piece but the composer does demand musicality and it was vital to observe strict tempo and dynamic range. Often with test pieces such as this one, adjudicators will award good marks to Bands that can perform the piece in the style that the composer wanted.
On the day there were sixteen competing Bands and TSB were drawn to play third. As Kenilworth School was a new venue this year, the acoustics of the sports hall were an unknown factor. Fortunately as things turned out the Hall was just fine and TSB put on a very good performance. Our MD Neil Brownless was happy with the way we played and so we just had to wait several hours until all Bands had played before the results were announced. We needed to finish first or second to secure a place in the National Finals so we waited with bated breath when the announcer declared that he would announce in reverse order fourth, third, second and first.
We weren’t fourth so we had everything crossed, and TSB were announced as coming third! Oh my, mixed emotions. A fantastic result for the Band but sadly we missed out on a trip to the Finals by one place! We took lots of positives from the day not least the fact that it was the Band’s highest placing in the competition since 2004! Onwards and upwards!
The Band has a full calendar of events through-out the year, starting with the Spring concert as featured above. We’ll be at Midsummer Music again in June, Abington Park in August and Leighton Buzzard bandstand in July.
As Towcester continues to grow anyone out there that is looking for a friendly Band to play with, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We are currently recruiting Tuba and Cornet players. We have a couple of vacancies due to personnel moving out of the area.
If you are interested and want to find out more, please visit www.towcesterstudioband.co.uk . We practice Monday and Wednesday evenings 8-10pm. A warm welcome is always assured at Towcester Studio!
Report this article as inappropriate
Comments
You need to log in before you can do that! It's only a quick registration process to join the AMA network and completely free.
Loading...
Help