Festival to Feature Championship Brass

There’s a chance for local music fans to hear some of the best in brass band music when the Midland Area Test Piece Festival takes place at the Newstead Centre on Sunday, February 27th with five different bands performing the music set for the Midland region of the National Brass Band Championships.

The event will feature hosts Newstead Brass together with bands from Hathern, Long Eaton, Shirebrook and Whitwell. Each band will play the music set for its grade of the championship as well a hymn tune and receive feedback on their performance from experienced brass band adjudicator Mr John Roberts.

The first band will play at 7.00 pm with each band following on at approximately half hourly intervals. Admission costs just £1 at the door and everyone is welcome to come along. There will be a bar and refreshments available.

A Newstead band spokesman said, “The music for this year’s championships is challenging to the players but accessible to a non-brass band audience with music by 20th century composers Philip Wilby (including his ‘Paganini Variations’ based on the famous melody from his 24th Caprice ) and John Golland, Salvationist Eric Ball and the brass band transcription of Berlioz’s ‘Carnival Romain’. It’s a great chance for both brass followers and those with a more general musical interest to come along and experience some classic pieces from the brass band repertoire.”

The Newstead Centre is on Tilford Road, Newstead, Nottinghamshire, NG15 0BU near the railway station.

Around 80 bands will compete in the Midland region brass band championships in Bedworth over the weekend of 12th and 13th March with the winners progressing to the national finals in London and Harrogate in the autumn.

For more information on the music to be played, see the test piece festival page of the website.

New look for Newstead brass website

2011 has started with a minor face lift for the band website which will hopefully make it easier to use and faster to find the information you need about how to book the band or find out where we're performing.

Most pages now give details of coming events and the home page now has a link to the band's facebook page plus a special area for messages for band players. The News page has been enhanced with for latest UK band news headlines from 4barsrest and videos of both Newstead Brass and our friends Jim and Ian from 'Brassed Up'. Future plans include more photographs of the band, band history and a guestbook for audience feedback.

If you have any comments on the changes, please mail news@newsteadband.co.uk

Full House Enjoy Newstead New Year Treat

Newstead Brass and their musical director Duncan Beckley entertained a ‘full house’ when ‘Newstead Played Big Band’ at the Newstead Centre on Sunday, January 2nd 2011 with the capacity audience also enjoying the music of ‘Brassed Up’ and the ‘Imperfect Fifth’ saxophone quartet and celebrating the winners of the band’s 2010 awards.

Newstead brass’ selections focussed on big band favourites and featured many of the band’s soloists – Dave Bird (Soprano), Kirk Turner, Blake Tague, Andrew Stevenson (cornets), Michael Cordon (Flugel), Sandra Kowalenko (Horn), Claire Taylor (trombone) and Lynden Cooper (Euphonium). The second half of the programme saw both band and musical director appear dressed as ‘Heroes and Villains’ with the programme including suitable music from Phantom of the Opera, Batman and James Bond adding to the occasion.

James Stretton (brass multi-instrumentalist) and Iain Jackson (piano) performed some of their ‘Brassed Up’ programme and ‘wowed’ the audience with Jazz and updated classical transcriptions including ‘The Barber of Seville’ played by Jim on 13 different brass instruments and the piano.  Videos of 'Brassed Up' are now available on the right hand side of the 'news' page of the Newstead website.

‘Imperfect Fifth’ performed as a saxophone quartet and these talented young musicians, who met at the South East Derbyshire Music Centre, enhanced their growing reputation with rag, jazz and swing selections.

The evening also included the presentation of the band’s annual awards including thanks for Lynden Cooper (bandmaster and concert compere) and Melanie Cooper (band manger) for their work throughout 2010. Duncan Beckley’s award was shared between Mike Allcock and Carol Hanson for their ‘behind the scenes’ work throughout the year and the ‘players player of the year’ went to Kirk Turner (principal cornet).

A band spokesman added, “We’ve made this end-of-year fun concert night an annual part of our programme each year since December 1999, but this year’s concert was one of the best so far.”