Well what a month its been, quite busy for the band with two big concerts and a remembrance Sunday .The first concert right at the beginning of the month is described here by Nicola Swann, or secretary and Solo horn: –
On 27th October the band performed our first concert after the summer break. It was nice to see the Thornton Little Theatre so full and we decided to showcase some of our younger players for this evening. Our soloists were Tom Christie, who played The Acrobat on trombone, Chloe Cooper played Let Me Try Again on baritone and James Barnett completed our solo section with Share My Yolk on Cornet. All 3 soloists are all under 18 and have been in the band less than a year so we are incredibly proud of their achievements so far and hope they continue. Well done Chloe, Tom and James. Our final piece in the concert was extracts from Windows of the World by Peter Graham. This is an exciting piece which explores music from around the world. This type of music is a perfect example of how brass band has evolved over recent years. The piece includes solos for tenor horn (Nicola Swann), flugelhorn (Natalie Beddows), and Bb cornet (Paul Cooper) and all sorts of shenanigans from the percussion section (Matt Hill). The full piece can be heard at Brass In Concert on 23rd November at the Salvation Army Citadel, Raikes Parade, Blackpool.
Next up was Remembrance Sunday, this year was very memorable. The cold crisp Sunday morning was warmed a little by the bright sunshine and attended by hundreds of people from the local community, all branches of the armed forces out on parade making a very spectacular procession worth of the event, the old comrades were there, still soldiering on all these years later displaying there colours with as much pride today as they ever did. The band lead the procession under orders from the TA colour Sergeant. This year Wyre borough council had sorted out the traffic and had the roads closed before during and after the event and the got the PA system working reliably this year preventing a repeat of last years Norman Collier dodgy microphone performance.
All in all this years parade was one to look back on with proud memories for the band.
Pictures of the day can be found here
Players from the younger end of the band took part in the Fleetwood Music Festival this year and came away with a clutch of trophies and certificates, Chloe Cooper or 2nd Baritone player netted the biggest haul winning the brass section