Newstead Brass under MD Duncan Beckley recently entertained a ‘full house’ when their local ‘Big Band’ inspired New Year’s concert attracted a capacity audience.

Stable full

Newstead featured the whole stable of their talented soloists with features for 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 MD dressed as 'Heroes and Villains' with the programme including suitable music from 'Phantom of the Opera', 'Batman' and 'James Bond'.

All 13

Multi instrumentalist James Stretton wowed the audience accompanied by Iain Jackson on piano including 'The Barber of Seville', played by Jim on 13 different brass instruments and the piano.

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 farNewstead Brass

Awards

The saxophone quartet 'Imperfect Fifth' also thrilled the appreciative audience, before the band rounded of the evening with the presentation of their annual awards, with Kirk Turner gaining the 'Player’s Player' award and the 'Conductor’s Award' going jointly to Mike Allcock and Carol Hanson.

Fun

A band spokesman told 4BR: "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."