Last Sunday the Croydon Symphonic Band, played at the Colchester round of the National Wind Band Festival. Despite an absolutely horrible journey (for me because of my bad back, for others because a lorry shed it's load of Christmas Trees on the A12) we all arrived i decent time, had a run through ad then hit the stage.
The consensus of opinion in the Band is that we played as well as we could have, and quite possibly as well as we have. I am glad to be able to say that the adjudicators seem to have agreed and given us a Gold Award. couple of years ago BASWE introduced an extra, higher, standard of a Platinum award, and now it is only Platinum award winners who get an automatic invitation to the finals, gold award winners have to wait. Given the standard of our performance we are hopeful of an invitation to the finals, which we are especially keen to be at this year, since they will be help at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Well we followed that with a fund raising concert lat night (Saturday) for Ifield Church. As well as the program we played at the festival we added a few repertoire numbers including my favourite show selection - Les Miserables. I get a tremendous kick out of playing with this band, I have been with them for well over 30 years now, and I think that overall we are better now than at any time in the past. However we are short on numbers in the heavy brass, a shortage that is about to become critical as our first trombone is leaving due to a change in his work. In consequence I don't know what part I will be playing when we start up again after Christmas, at various times this term I have played Bass, Bass Trombone, First Trombone and Euphonium. The only one of these I would not be happy commit to would First Trombone. I am not a tenor player, I never have been and never will be I just can't play up there.
How many Tuba players does it take to change a light bulb? None we can't reach that high.
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