Editorial ~ 2005: September

1-Sep-2005

This month we give our views on the need to look at player registration, the 2006 Regional test pieces and the contest season ahead.


Time to look at player registration

As we approach the busiest part of the contesting season in the banding calendar, there cannot be more than a handful of bands throughout the country who are not in need of reinforcements to their playing ranks.

Such has been the drain away of playing resources in the past decade or more, that a great number of bands are now finding it next to impossible to field a full band of regular players at contests. Thankfully, this has been recognized in some contest organizing quarters such as Pontins amongst others, and the rules concerning registration of players has been relaxed to allow bands to ‘import' players to help them out come contest day.

For a majority now, it is the only way that they can carry on regular contesting.

This is a realistic approach to a problem that has grown to such an extent that there is now a need for the whole question of player registration to be looked in its entirety, as the problem of lack of regular players for competing bands in all sections of the movement has become one of the most important issues we now face.

Allowing bands to perform at contests with ‘guest' players is just one possible answer to a problem that will get worse and not better in the next few years as bands find it more and more difficult to survive with an ever smaller base of regular players committed to them on a week by week basis.

It is not a question of loyalty to individual bands anymore – that went out of the window years ago, but a question of realistic survival.

Perhaps it is time to scrap the registration of players being fixed to one band and to allow individuals if they wish, to register themselves as performers with up to three bands at a specific level.

This would free up the system to allow for a player to perform with a number of bands on a given contest day, although they would pay the Brass Band Registry a fee for each band they register with, and then play with at the contest. As players could only sign for bands in a specific section, it would also reduce the practice of bands roping in ‘ringers' for contests, especially in the lower sections and would perhaps encourage genuine bandsmen and women to help out other local bands, rather than those bands having to rely on the mercenary tendencies of less scrupulous players.

Given that bands need as much help as they can get nowadays, perhaps the time has come.

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The Regional test pieces

The usual excitement that was generated by the announcement of the Regional test pieces has been somewhat dissipated this year following the release of the details for next years contests a few weeks prior to their usual announcement at the Lower Section National Finals.

Whether or not this was a deliberate plan of action by the Music Panel is now irrelevant, but unlike last year when their choices came in for a fair amount of criticism (from 4BR amongst other sit must be said), the selection made for 2006 seems to have been well received.

That is good news not only for the Music Panel, who have produced an eclectic choice of works, but also for the bands, the players, the conductors, and most importantly the prospective audiences at the Regional contest – a dying species if ever there was such over the past few years.

The choices have been made with both musical challenges and musical enjoyment in mind for all parties concerned, although a few eyebrows may have been raised in certain bandrooms at the choice of ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth' for the top section bands so soon after it was premiered as an own choice selection at the European Championships.    

That said, all the pieces have merit and are based this year much more accurately on the realistic levels of performance that can be expected in the different section throughout the country. None are too hard – although Gilbert Vinter's ‘Entertainments' will certainly stretch the bands in the Third Section – something we think both they and the audiences will enjoy though.

Howard Snells' ‘Images of the Millennium' will present Second Section bands with a stern but enjoyable test, whilst Goff Richards ‘Voyage of Discovery' has stretched quite a few top section bands of late and will provide a fair and level playing field for the aspiring bands in the First Section. Finally, Alan Fernie has a great knack of producing well thought out and enjoyable works for lower section bands, and his ‘Anglian Dances' should encourage and well as test those performers, many of them youngsters in the Fourth Section. 

All in all then a good selection on paper, but the acid test still awaits the first notes come February, March and April next year. We will then see if our optimism has not been misplaced.

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The Contest Season ahead

Even though the cricketers of Australia and England have been doing their best to keep any other sport off the back pages of our newspapers over the past few weeks, you know when the real important seat of your pants sporting contests are taking place, when you start crying into your Sunday morning coffee at the state of your football team position in the league tables.   

The same goes for the brass band contest season ahead.

Forget Shane Warne, Freddy Flintoff and the rest of the Ashes spectaculars, the real business starts here and now. In the coming weeks we have the British Open, Lower Section National Finals, London, Buxton, Folkestone, Torquay, Treorchy, Fleetwood, Wilkinson, Pontins and Brass in Concert to name just a few.

There will be tears and tantrums, triumphs and titles, controversy and accusations, hard luck stories and inspired performances, winners and losers. It is going to be exciting, thought provoking, full of incidents, clipped notes, brilliant individuals and superb ensembles, conductors putting their necks on the line and conductors having them lopped off by the judges – all this and the letters and comments will fly, myths and legends.

All this and not a single football will be kicked in anger. You still can't beat brass banding, even if your team does go on and win the European Cup. 

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