…but we didn’t conquer.

I am, of course, talking about Watford Band’s performance at the recent Milton Keynes Brass Band Festival.

As I expected I was very nervous, but not about playing the music, I was more nervous about making sure everyone got there, had their tickets and registration cards, that we’d got a room to rehearse/warm up in, etc. In the end everything was fine. And if there’s one thing that we achieved on Sunday morning it was the fact that we turned out a full band comprising of our own players and not reliant on guests.

But we did achieve more than that. Okay we didn’t win, but we certainly didn’t disgrace ourselves either; we were just one point below the band above us, Hitchin Band. The comments received from members of the audience were positive and many members of the band have gained their first experience on the contest stage. I think we’ve gained another new player too.

I think Martyn gained a lot from the experience too. We didn’t all agree with the adjudicator’s comments but he did highlight overblowing which we know, as a band, that we can be guilty of. Having listened to the CD of our performance the tuning wasn’t bad, which is an area we’ve often fallen down on in the past. There are some moments when we’re not playing together, particularly in the cornet section; this could be down to the acoustics of the hall and nerves, but it’s something we probably need to work on.

The programme that we played was:

Britannia – A Salvation Army “Festival March” based on Rule Britannia
Crimond – A Wes Kendrick arrangement of the famous hymn tune
Doyen – A Goff Richard’s composition
La Mourisque – David Lancaster’s arrangement of Tylman Susato’s piece taken from The Dansyre

I think the adjudicator particularly enjoyed La Mourisque as this is a very good, new arrangement for brass band.

Now we can work hard for the “areas”, the London & Southern Counties Regional Brass Band Championships in Stevenage, coming up in March. At least this time we won’t have to deal with the subjective nature of programme choice as this is a set test piece, Edward Gregson’s Partita in our case.