On Saturday 16th September, Corby Silver Band took to the stage at Cheltenham Racecourse representing the Midlands area in the National Brass Band Finals of Great Britain.
We had rehearsed the chosen test piece ‘Petite Suite De Ballet’ and performed it in front of an audience during our open rehearsal the evening before. We had a lot of positive feedback from members of the audience, which gave us a real
boost.
On contest day we were drawn to play 12th out of the 20 bands taking part. We took to the stage and performed the test piece. There were a couple of splits,
along the way and so wasn’t a perfect performance, but generally the band felt it had played well. The representative from 4 bars rest agreed, commenting ...
Corby Silver
There is purposeful intent right from the opening bars of this performance. The military style is captured with the right mix of fun and confidence
builds through the ranks.
'Pas Seul' is one of the nicest of the contest so far. Well done all, and the solo contributions enhance the performance.
Hats off for the 'Minuet' — just the odd moment along the way, but so musical in its delivery. We close with an 'Ensemble' that just faded away at the end despite that robust few final bars.
Overall:
An account that had a lot to admire in terms of musical character. It just faded
at the end, which was a real pity.
After all the bands had performed we waited for the results.
Although there were plenty of positive comments from both adjudicators, they obviously wanted to hear something different, as we were placed a disappointing 17th out of the 20 bands taking part.
But there was no doom and gloom, as there were lots of reasons to be proud of ourselves. We were the highest placed out of the 3 Midlands area qualifiers. We had worked hard as a team, dramatically improving the overall ability
of the band. We were able to attend the finals with a full complement of players of which the majority of the players were playing at their first National Finals contest.
And
most importantly - due to our 1st place win at the Midlands Area contest in March we will be promoted to the 3rd section.