Friary Guildford recently took top honours at the SCABA Folkestone contest, and scooped a flurry of prizes in the process.

After winning the award for best hymn tune, the band went on to win first prize with their performance of their own choice test piece selection 'Burlesque'.

Solo features

This piece featured several of the band’s soloists, who all received very positive remarks from the adjudicator, Philip Harper.

Richard Straker took the prize for best instrumentalist with his cornet playing, while the best euphonium prize went to Andy Porter.

This was a timely reward for Andy, since because of work commitments he is having to scale back his involvement with the band. To complete the collection of silverware, the band was also awarded the trophies for best bass section and best percussion section.

I'm really impressed by the way everybody tackled such a tricky and relatively unknown piece of band repertoire, and am glad that our hard work was recognised by the adjudicatorMD, Chris King

A triple record

In over 100 years of the Southern Counties Amateur Band Association (SCABA), Friary Guildford are the only band to have won all three top section contests in one year – and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they were also awarded SCABA Band of the Year 2009.

The band’s MD, Chris King, told 4BR: "I'm really impressed by the way everybody tackled such a tricky and relatively unknown piece of band repertoire, and am glad that our hard work was recognised by the adjudicator."