Midlands Regional Championships
FOSS Dyke Band is feeling just champion again.
The brass band lived up to its reputation as Lincolnshire’s premier brass band by winning the first section contest at the Midlands Regional Championships.
It means the band will now compete with around 20 others in the finals of the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain later this year in Cheltenham.
Foss Dyke and its musical director Gareth Westwood spent weeks working on Morley Calvert’s Introduction, Elegy and Caprice, the selected ‘test’ for the regional contest, a deceptively difficult piece of music commissioned originally for the European Championships in 1978.
The hard-working band had mastered the technical and musical challenges of the 15-minute composition and was confident going to the contest at the Civic Hall, Bedworth, near Coventry.
But victory was the icing on the cake for the commitment of the conductor and players, who headed to the Civic Hall in a fleet of cars for an early-morning final rehearsal ahead of the main event.
The adjudicators for the contest, the experienced Derek Renshaw, a former Grimethorpe Colliery and Black Dyke player and successful MD, and Steve Pritchard-Jones, another established former player and musical director, were both impressed with the Foss Dyke performance.
In the written remarks, given to each of the 15 competing bands, Pritchard-Jones praised: “An excellent performance which was controlled and played with panache.”
And Renshaw, as the performance came to a finish, said: “This really is good playing. I just sat back and listened to the end. This was an excellent performance all round, so well directed, tempos and dynamics just right. Thankyou for an exciting rendition.”
He pinpointed the traps in each of the three movements but said two bands were ‘absolutely clear’ in claiming their Cheltenham qualification places, Foss Dyke and runners-up Raunds Temperance, with Audley Brass also heading for the finals on September 13.
Renshaw, acknowledging the hidden challenges, said that if bands thought Introduction, Elegy and Caprice an easy piece when it first appeared on their stands, ‘how wrong they were’.
Pritchard-Jones said it had been ‘a great standard’ by the bands in the first section, the second of five tiers in the brass band pyramid of excellence.
Band MD Westwood was also delighted with the performance and result.
He said: “I’m determined to build the band the right way. The players are so committed and understand that, so we never over-reach ourselves.
“This was a great piece to show that too — so difficult to capture its style and with tests for everyone.
“I concentrated on the key things such as tempi and dynamics and allowed the flexibility to come from that. I was delighted by the way the band played but the win was a great bonus.”
Midlands Regional Championships Winners Foss Dyke Band, who rehearse at Waddington, near Lincoln, are on an upward curve having won the regional second section contest in 2015 and more recently 2023.
It has in the past played at the highest level and the signs are that it may do again.
The band hopes to take part in two more contests this year, as well as the Cheltenham finals in September, and also has a number of concerts on the way.
Following on from its successful Night At The Movies themed concerts, the band will present a Stage and Screen soundtrack spectacular at Waddington Village Hall on Sunday, May 11, at 7.30pm with music from Brassed Off, Wicked, Moana and many other favourites from the big and small screen.
