Friday, 18 May 2012

Spring Break (ish)

With the Areas contest done and dusted, April and May tend to be quieter months for the band. Filing away the test piece after working on it for weeks provides the opportunity to look at some new music as well as delving into the library to find the hidden musical gems that are gathering dust on the shelves. Although this is mainly the time for looking ahead and preparing for our forthcoming summer season, the band has been involved in some key events in the town, such as the traditional Good Friday hot cross bun giveaway and a Queen’s Jubilee celebration evening held at East Devon District Council’s headquarters.

This year the band has had extra work to do in preparation for its 150th anniversary celebrations. Our soprano player Christine has been very busy finalising the book that’s been written to celebrate the band’s history, whilst our principal cornet player Fiona has been involved in compiling the booklet that will accompany our new CD. Both the book and CD will be released for sale in June and, although we don’t know the exact date quite yet, full details of where and when you can buy them will be available on the website as soon as possible.

For those of you who may be expecting our summer concerts in Connaught Gardens to start on the May Bank Holiday weekend as normal (which, confusingly, is in June anyway),  this year we will be starting a week later. On Sunday 3rd June the band will be taking part in what will be one of the town’s biggest events of the year - the Diamond Jubilee Street Party. If the street party held in 2011 to mark the royal wedding is anything to go by, we are sure this will be another fantastic event full of great community spirit. Our Sunday evening concerts will begin on 3rd June and will continue throughout the summer until our last concert on 2nd September. One more important date for your diary is Saturday 18th August, which is when the band will be holding its Last Night of the Proms concert. More details of this event will be available soon!

Saturday, 17 March 2012

Highest Ever Placing!

The band is celebrating this week after achieving our best ever result in the Regional Championships by coming fourth in the Second Section. Promotion in January to the Second Section followed a great couple of years for the band, during which we were crowned West of England Third Section Champions twice and competed in the National Finals in both 2010 and 2011. Knowing that we would be facing a tougher challenge in a higher section, after Christmas we set to work on the late Goff Richards’s Cross Patonce to try and get to grips with this very tricky piece of music.

Cross Patonce proved challenging for every section of the band but, as always, everybody worked extremely hard to make sure they could achieve what was being asked of them. As the piece started to come together, we began to believe that achieving our aim of being placed within the top ten bands was a real possibility.

With a sense of positivity in the air, even being drawn in the dreaded number one slot was not enough to dampen our enthusiasm and we took to the stage bright and early at 10am. After a performance that we felt was good but perhaps lacking in some of the Sidmouth sparkle that had been present at rehearsals, we faced the long wait until gone 3pm for the results. With no real expectation of being read out within the top six, we were delighted to be announced as having come fourth, ahead of many very proficient and well-established Second Section bands. As this was our first outing at this level, we took great pride in the fact we were placed ahead of 12 other bands and had really made our mark in the section. A special mention must go to Elaine on euphonium who bravely agreed to take on the tough cadenza that featured early in the piece.  She tackled it brilliantly and managed to hold her nerve on the day to play it as well as she had consistently played it during rehearsals. Well done!

With the Areas done and dusted for 2012, it’s time to turn our focus back to the recording of the band’s new CD, which is taking place over the weekend of the 23rd, 24th and 25th March. Although great fun, recording a CD is a very long and tiring process - both physically and mentally. Luckily, with Ivor and Fiona in the band we’ll never run short of food or water, so all we’ll need are lips of steel and coffee on tap to keep us going throughout the weekend. Keep an eye on our website for more details of when and where you’ll be able to buy your copy of the CD.