Latest news from the City of Birmingham Brass Band

4th at the Midlands Area Contest!

2012-03-11T13:54:00.000Z

Yesterday saw the band travel to Bedworth to compete against 16 other bands in the Midlands area contest. Although a 9 am rehearsal was a bit of a shock to the system (most of us previously believed brass instruments didn't work before lunchtime), rehearsals on Philip Harper's "Olympus" had been going well. We went on stage feeling optimistic and left it 12 minutes later grinning from ear to ear. Although a few had to shoot off a big group of us stuck together for fish and chips in the local pub before returning to listen to last few bands and await the results.

4th place from such a large field of quality bands, alongside a performance of which we could be so proud, was a great achievement! We really want to thank the players who gave up their time to stand in for a few ours who couldn't make it, as well as those who switched instruments to fill a couple of gaps. Most importantly we need to thank our MD Warren, who is so passionate about helping the band achieve its potential. His hard work on keeping a controlled tempo and sustained sound seemed to win favour with both the judges and the audience.

This blog hasn't been updated since the summer when we were gearing up for our "History As You've Never Heard it Before" concert. That was such a big success that we decided to put highlights on youtube and repeat the whole thing this January in Solihull. In between we've run a Young Composers Competition, had a lot of fun rehearsing Edward Gregson's challenging piece "The Plantagenets" (even if that time we saved our best performance until the concert after the contest!), and as well as our usual concerts we had some new ones over Christmas which let us help raise a load of money for charity.

Overall the last 12 months have been a great time to be in the band, something that was captured for me in two moments yesterday. Firstly one of our deps for the contest expressing an interest in coming back, because the band had such a "great atmosphere" about it. Secondly the muted celebrations when our 4th place was announced, knowing that we were so close to a top 3 finish that would have sent us to the nationals. We've never been a band obsessed with contesting and we probably never will be, but over the last year we've gained a real ambition to do everything as well as we can, and that's something that's a lot of fun to be a part of.

Writing our own history

2011-07-16T10:26:00.000+01:00

It’s about a year since we moved into our new home at Joseph Chamberlain College and the time has flown by so quickly.

When we first visited the college and were invited to make our home there, we could not believe our luck. It’s an amazing place –You walk up a tree lined avenue to the main entrance and can immediately see it’s a building full of light, and space. It looks beautifully designed and it has rightly won an award for best public building in the UK.

Inside is even more beautiful, with all the rooms built around two open spaces, the quadrangle and the gardens. It is state of the art, with wonderful facilities that the students perhaps don’t realise how fortunate they are to have the benefit of. These facilities include a fabulous, purpose built performance hall with raked seating that interconnects with and opens up onto a full size dance studio. And this is where we now enjoy rehearsing each week.

Even before we moved in, we knew we had to make the most of this fantastic opportunity that had been handed to us. It was our chance and our incentive to start making some changes and build a band that’s going places and doing things. We wanted to have a future to look forward to and create something that members and audiences enjoyed and wanted to be part of. We also wanted to be able to give something back to the college and what better way than to include them in we were doing?

It started with a redesign of our logo – a day’s “work experience” workshop that we ran with JCC’s tutors, their art and design students and professional Graphic Designer, Glenn O’Connor from Studioworx. The students were fantastic, so creative it made judging very hard and the result is the fabulous new logo we have today.

The new look then proceeded (slowly) to encompass a change in uniform, moving away from always wearing the traditional brass band heavily brocaded jacket, to wearing all black, with a rainbow of brightly coloured ties that are actually rather reminiscent of the traditional bright uniform colours of brass bands the world over (except perhaps the lime green!)

Musically, we realised we wanted to be a bit different too. We’re not of Black Dyke or Grimethorpe’s standards (yet?) - We’re an amateur band, made up of local people, a few of whom are professional musicians, but many of whom are students, teachers, nurses, engineers, accountants etc. - A myriad of hard working people who come together to learn, to make music, to get better and to have fun.

We’re a creative group too and we put on a jolly good show that our audiences enjoy, so we realised that this was where we could shine, this was where we could make our mark... especially with the help of the facilities at JCC and the talents of their staff and students too.

And so begins a serious of innovative, different concerts. They’ve been created by us, organised by us and hosted by us, in what we’ve quickly adopted as our “home.”

We celebrated our launch at Christmas with our first concert “Come Follow the Band,” where we premiered a brilliant new piece, “Waiting to be Reached,” written by our very own Musical Director, Warren Belshaw. One of JCC’s students, Idriss, created a film to go with the piece and 4 of the college’s dancers choreographed and performed a dance during the evening too. It was a great evening and left us on a high, wanting to do more.

Which brings me to tonight! Tonight is the premier of our second concert, “History as You’ve Never Heard it Before.” One might perhaps call it a show rather than a concert. Even more adventurous than our first concert, it features film clips, dancing, singing, African drumming and narration as well as some fantastic brass band music.

It’s not the most accurate or complete portrayal of history, but that would be impossible to achieve in two hours. Rather, it is our own unique take on our world, starting with the dawn of time and featuring music and events that made us laugh; that inspired us; that made us sad; that made us thankful and that made us joyful, glad to be alive and to be able to make music and share it with others.

If you are coming tonight to join us, we hope you enjoy the show as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it and we look forward to sharing more unique events with you in the future.

Open Rehearsal

2011-04-18T10:50:00.001+01:00

It seemed like within days of me taking home a large coffin-looking, ragged, old box that contained an equally ragged, old trombone I was a member of the Barley Mow Junior School Band. From that day forth, I have realised the real value behind being part of a larger group. And with that in mind, it was terrific last Tuesday for the City of Birmingham Band to host an "Open Rehearsal" in our home of the Joseph Chamberlain 6th Form College to give the young whipper-snappers a bash with the big boys (and girls)!
And boy, oh boy, did they take the bull by the horns! (Including a stray French one!)
The Fantastic Five - Elly-Jo, Daria, Lewis, Peter and Teresa - turned up and blew us away - literally! They must've been just the tiniest bit nervous (come on, aren't we all a bit nervous when we turn up to a new band, but these guys were just 10/11/12 years old, turning up to a band full of strange adults - and I use the word "strange" advisedly here!)
We started with a hymn (of course) - bit of tuning, bit of ensemble - just to settle the nerves (of the adults really!) and then worked on a few pieces with the aim of putting on a little informal concert at the end of the evening to those parents and family members who'd so kindly come to support their talented youngsters.
I was told beforehand that most of these girls and boys were Grade I standard - but you'd've never have thought it! Got stuck in straight away! I think it's fair to say that they really took the band by surprise, with their courage and determination.
I'd chosen a few pieces that would give us a good little concert: a simple antiphonal fanfare calle Intratum; Eye of the Tiger (theme from 'Rocky III'); a hymn; and a an appropriately titled "Grand Day Out" to finish.
Intratum - two choirs of brass at either side of the hall. All sight-reading - all note-perfect!
Eye of the Tiger - there's some tricky rhythms in this...did it stop them? No way! If anyone ever needed proof that playing in a band accelerates learning, here it was.
Hymn - Rubato, dynamics, pauses, ensemble - "Bring it on!" they cried.
A Grand Day Out - Afterbeats galore! Bum-cha, bum-cha, bum-cha, bum-cha - again "What's hard about that?!"
It's the first time City of Birmingham Band have done anything like this (our new home at JCC gives us the opportunity to fulfil lots of our plans - our own concert hall to rehearse and perform in, lots of space to split and rehearse in sections or as ensembles - it's just great!). The feedback from everyone was terrific - the kids loved it; the band loved it; the parents loved it. It's definitely on the calendar to do more.
A big thank you once again to Elly-Jo, Daria, Lewis, Peter and Teresa, and to all their supportive folks. The band were so proud of them.
A Grand Day Out it certainly was!
WB

Welcome to our new blog!

2011-04-06T17:01:00.002+01:00

We've been thinking for a while about the best way of adding news to the site. Hopefully this can be our new way of letting people know about all the fun stuff we've got lined up, and people will be able to add articles without having to learn a load of website geekery!