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Concert at The Brindley.
Saturday 17th May saw us in concert with the fabulous prize winning Cheshire Chord at The Brindley in Runcorn. The band performed two short sections in the concert. Our featured soloists were Mike Jones playing "Russian Dance" and Annabel Stapleton performing "A time for peace" .We opened our part of the concert with "Where Eagles Sing" by Paul Lovatt Cooper and finishing our part of the concert with the ever popular Riverdance.
Promotion to the Grand Shield!
The band attended only its second Spring Festival in Blackpool yesterday (10th May). After being promoted from the Senior Trophy last year, this year we competed in the Senior Cup. We were drawn 18th out of 19 bands, so we had a long wait before we played in the Pavilion Theatre at the Winter Gardens. Overall, the band & Paul were really pleased with the performance, and we felt that the preparation of the piece had been timed really well.
The band were awarded second place with generally positive comments from both adjudicators, Derek Broadbent and Chris Wormald . As the top four bands in the Senior Cup competition are promoted we will be in the Grand Shield competition next year - yet another step closer to the British Open!
March 2008
North West Area Contest, Blackpool, Sunday 9th March 2008.
The band competed again in the Championship section in the Opera House at Blackpool Winter Gardens last Sunday. Paul and band felt that we performed a very musical reading of Eric Ball's Festival Music and felt that we perhaps deserved a slightly higher placing than 8th. However, 8th place is two places higher than last year and is enough to keep us in the top flight for next year.
Other News: The band are sad to say goodbye to Adam Taylor and James Emberley who are moving on for personal reasons. Wire Brass would like to wish them all the best in the future. The band would also like to thank Tony Whittingham, Paul Walton and Mike Johnson for helping out at the Area.
January 2008
The band has just returned from an exciting weekend at Butlins in Skegness with some good and some bad news. First the bad news, we came last overall. Now the good news, we won the entertainment prize for our Dance Band set on the Sunday. We are obviously delighted with the Entertainment prize especially as the audience were really appreciative of our efforts. We would have liked to have achieved a better result with our performances from the brass band adjudicators, however, you can't have everything and as all brass bands earn their bread and butter from entertaining audiences this is a fantastic title to have won.
We're now getting ready for Brass at The Guild Contest in Preston and the North West Area contest in March.
December began with the fabulous 'West End to Hollywood' concert with CODYs. The concert was unlike anything the band had done before, with both groups involved in the staging of the musical numbers but we thoroughly enjoyed the experience and we hope to work with CODYs again in the future. Photos are available here. We then had our regular carol concert in St. Thomas' church and then, like so many other bands, spent the weekends playing Christmas Carols in Warrington town centre and then Morrison's in Stockton Heath. We would like to thank the staff at Morrison's for inviting us and then looking after us while we were there.
December saw the band say goodbye to Ian & Jill Riley, who have been with the band since 2001. We would like to wish Ian, Jill, Gemma & Ben all the best for the future.
Our solo horn player, Annabel Stapleton, has been on maternity leave since Pontins, and her baby daughter, Bethan, arrived in the early hours of the 10th December weighing in at a healthy 8lb 3 oz. We wish Annabel, Andy and Bethan all the best and hope that Annabel starts practising soon ready for the area contest!
