2007 New Zealand Brass Band Championships - Retrospective: Band of the Year

With a chance to really show what brass band entertainment was all about in these parts, the four bands produced a bit of a yawn fest...

The Scenic Circle Hotels Band of the Year Contest which took place on the Sunday afternoon following the main National Contest should have provided both the competing bands and the New Zealand Brass Band Association with the ideal opportunity to promote a positive image of themselves to the music loving public of the local area and beyond.

Unfortunately it provided just the opposite.

This was one of the poorest entertainment contests 4BR has ever had the opportunity to take time out to listen to over the past five or so years. A decent sized audience at the Bruce Mason Centre may have thought they had been entertained by four quality bands, but in reality they had just been spoon fed for the most part a succession of rather dated ideas, lethargic presentation and totally uninspiring musical repertoire from ensembles and their conductors who were either not bothered or were totally unable to understand the concept of providing decent quality musical entertainment.

Perhaps we are being unfair as we have been able to witness what the best brass bands have to offer in different parts of the world in recent years. This though was totally under whelming – and they were the words used by one of the judges on the day. Even at the conclusion of the contest there were arguments, with North Shore being deducted 10 points for going over time and still winning! That rather summed it all up.

It was for the most part a mess – from the post contest argument over points to the presentation and playing of the bands, the compere and then the final results ceremony. At times it was so bad it made your teeth curl.    

Contesting is of course the lifeblood of the brass band movement but on this evidence entertainment contesting in New Zealand at present has as much going for it as a small nun mistakenly walking into a penguin shooting contest. 

Jackie Clarke, the guest entertainment judge (who was a member of the panel of the NZ version of NZ Idol) put more professionalism into her three minute talk to the audience at the end of the contest than most of the bands did in the preceding two hours.  Her marks ranged from 65 to 83 out of 100 for the bands (with 18 points between first and fourth) – an indication of just how well she enjoyed it all. 

It must be hard for bands to up their game for three days in a row here at these championships, but given that there is not exactly a surfeit of contests going on each year, you would have thought they would have been able to produce better organised and executed programmes than this. What do they practice each week in their bandrooms?

First up were Dalewool Auckland Brass conducted by Nigel Weeks. Nigel is a proven quality conductor who has amassed an impressive CV of experience with a number of top class ensembles in the UK in the past couple of years. This programme though was like an episode of ‘Life on Mars' – banding in a time warp.

Eyes wide shut! Nigel Weeks and Dalewool take the applause

'Comedy Tonight' was sloppy and under rehearsed to open, whilst Andrew Large on principal cornet produced a decent account of ‘Lairg Muir' to take the soloist prize on the evening. ‘Honey Pie' was trite and completely lacked visual presence and comedic intent whilst ‘Brillante' featuring two euphoniums sounded tired and not particularly brilliant in execution from two soloists of diverse technical ability. They ended with a totally uninspiring ‘Dundonnell' from ‘Hymn of the Highlands'.

Giving it Large: Dalewool's principal cornet player takes the soloist award

Dalewool are a fine band, but here they were just amateurish, not helped by lame presentation and an air of disinterest from the performers. You sensed they did this contest out of duty, and it showed.

The Trusts Waitakere is a band that is rebuilding after some troubled times of late. Steven Booth did a good job in the Nationals, but perhaps that effort took it all out of them for this contest.

'Mephistopheles' was a dated opener before they featured their soloist, tuba player Stuart Bennion in Simon Kerwin's ‘Tica, Taco, Tuba' a supposed comedy item that turned out to be as funny as being found at the bottom of  a ruck with eight New Zealand forwards about to trample you to death.

Troms to the fore: Waitakere trom section have a sip of Hot Toddy

Too long, lacking in humour (both visual and playing) and delivered in a manner that suggested it need some practice time, it was also a piece that wouldn't feature high on the list of the composer's CV either we think. It was a bit of a car crash.

That was followed by ‘Hot Toddy' – right up to date there then, and a reprise of the band's sacred item at the contest, ‘Nicea' by William Himes which was their best playing by far.  Waitakere's programme was rounded off by ‘Galaxies' – a nice piece but as dated now as Blakes Seven is to the new Doctor Who. 

Steven is bringing Waitakere back to strength and doing a wonderful job. The future looks bright we are sure, but it should also look forward too in terms of concert repertoire. They are a better band than this we are sure.

The eventual winners took to the stage next. North Shore Brass directed by Brent Large (a dapper little chap the size of Sid Going, but with a personality in front of a band the size of Colin Meads) was the local band here and had worked their socks off at the National in coming 9th. That on paper may not seem a great result, but in fact they were perhaps a touch unlucky not to have come higher after producing two well rehearsed and presented test pieces.  

Preacherman! Jeff Tribe gives it fire and brimstone

Here they showed that they had brought that hard work to bear on their concert programme too, although some of the pieces wouldn't have sounded out of place if they had been unearthed in a pharaoh's tomb. Crucially, the band and MD looked and sounded as if they were actually enjoying themselves.

North Shore was not the best band here by some margin, but they were the one band that took the occasion seriously and, as a result deserved their win.

Music from the Jurassic period of band repertoire opened with ‘Farandole' from ‘L'arlesienne Suite', which featured some delicate soprano work from Martin Britt of Desford who was on top form all night. This made way for ‘Hailstorm' played in authentic period fashion by Vaughan McDonald. This was fine playing all right, but delivered in a style that really did hark back to the sepia tinted years when William Rimmer was a lad in short trousers.

'Mid all the Traffic' was a neat contrast before the band delivered their main item – ‘Jericho revisited' by William Himes, featuring an authentic bit of Welsh chapel fire and brimstone preaching from the pulpit by Jeff Tribe. This was the highlight of the entire contest – well rehearsed (we were told it was a bit of a mainstay of their concert repertoire), Mr Tribe was excellent value for money, the band played their parts neatly, and the visual gags were slickly delivered. If only the other bands could have done something even approaching it in professionalism.

Britt pop: Desford's Martin Britt hits top form with North Shore

Finally though a bit of a tame ending with ‘Vitae Lux' that perhaps needed to be played at the start rather than the end of a concert programme, although Martin Britt left New Zealand with a cracking top C to end. 

That just left Marlborough District Brass under the ever so happy Kevin Moseley. We have never seen such a genuinely up beat chap conduct a band in our lives before. This wasn't false showmanship either, just a very nice bloke enjoying himself to the full.

His band was also a happy bunch too, although the decision to place the drum kit in the middle of the band formation and in front of the main brass instruments was a balance disaster. Each piece was a times obliterated by it, despite a fine player doing her best to keep in the background. 


Showtime Marlborough style!

'The Muppet's Show Theme' opened things well, and with a nice touch of humour, but then things went pear shaped.  

Mike Ford is a superb horn player (as he showed in the Champion of Champions Final) but his choice of Simon Kerwin's completely inaccessible solo ‘Grand Master' did him no favours at all. It just meandered from one unfulfilled idea to the next for far too long. The end came both as a blessing and a surprise – a fine player let down by an awful piece of music.

'All that Jazz' may have looked a great item on paper but in reality came across as something that would have been more at home in a youth contest. The two young singers from the band tried their best, but had accents that were as close to Chicago as my mam is to fitting into Catherine Zeta Jones's dress.

'Sway' came and went (and was so memorable we can't remember how it went) before a nice idea with Peter Graham's ‘Cartoon Music' never came close to working with the still pictures of the famous cartoon characters projected onto the screen at the back of the stage being so small you had to squint to see them. 

The same thing happened too with the clever idea of using images of the magnificent Marlborough country projected onto the screen accompanied by Richard Roger's ‘Favourite Things'. It would have worked a great deal better if they stuck to the floral, fauna and the spectacular things of nature rather than the occasional picture of people trying to strike funny poses for the camera. It was a clever idea rather wasted.

With the results to come, most people went out for a quick cup of tea rather than have to listen to the compere Bob Davis regale the crowd with yet another story of his time in Blighty. He is a real character is our Bob – a great export to New Zealand!

Nigel Boddice was a kind and benevolent judge in his summing up, making the pin point type of remarks and analysis required in just the right manner, whilst Miss Clark showed off but also hit the nail right on the head too.

The winners were announced as North Shore much to the delight of the auditorium, but the losers were the New Zealand Brass Band Association and the banding movement in general here. 

Iwan Fox and Anthony Banwell