As current Scottish Youth Champions, the band were honoured to be invited to play the the first half of the Gala Concert which followed the opening day of the Besson SBBA Open and Ensembles Competition on Saturday 2nd February at the Regal Community Theatre, Bathgate.
Again, unfortunately, due to the theatre’s policy on photography, there are no images to accompany this report.
The start of the concert was delayed due to the day’s contests overrunning, and unusually, the band remained on-stage after their rehearsal while the audience took their seats.
However, normality was restored when the band’s MD, Nigel Boddice MBE was applauded onto the stage and the concert got underway with the lively Mexican influenced Malaguena, accompanied by shrieks, whoops and dancing from the band!
Totally changing the mood, the band’s next item was the hauntingly beautiful ‘Scarlet Ribbons’, written by Jack Segal, arranged by Andy Duncan and performed beautifully by the band’s Principal Cornet, Susannah Downs accompanied by Ruth Glenn (normally principal horn player) on piano.
For the next piece, the band turned to the movies, and another concert favourite performing excerpts from The Pirates of the Caribbean.
Slowing things down once more, it was time for the band’s principal Trombone, Ross Learmonth to showcase his talents performing the wonderful ‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning’, written by Dave Mann & Bob Hilliard, and arranged by Alan Fernie.
Judging the day’s contests were two superb brass players, Michael Dodd, principal euphonium with the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and Les Neish, principal Eeb Bass with Fodens Richardson Band. It was only natural that they should be invited to participate in the evening concert, and it was Michael Dodd who first joined the band to perform ‘Peace’ by PleaseFrode Thingnaes. He was followed by Les Neish, who chose to demonstrate ‘Tuba quadrophonics’ (as explained by Nigel Boddice as a combination of blowing, humming, singing and something else!), performing Fnugg Blue, an intriguing composition by the contemporary Norwegian composer Oystein Baadsvik, where a folk-melody is given over to a solo tuba and given a very modern treatment.
Back to normality now, or maybe not, as the band then played ‘Flying Mallets’ featuring, so we were lead to believe, a Triangle solo by one of the trombone players, James Farrell, who unfortunately didn’t seem to be able to correctly identify said triangle! In actual fact, the piece featured the magnificent talents of percussionist Calum Gardner on Xylophone, although James did manage to correctly find the triangle for the final note!
It was back to serious business for the band’s final piece - the magnificent ‘Vitae Lux’ composed by Frode Alnaes and arranged by Norwegian composer Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen.
No encores this evening, despite the audience’s appreciative applause, but it was time for the interval, and to reset the stage for those other Scottish Champions, the kirkintilloch Band, who provided the second half of the evening’s entertainment under the baton of Paul Drury.
