Two of the banding world's most imaginative musical minds have been locked in thought in a picturesque corner of south west France over the last week as Allan Withington and Simon Dobson started work on their latest Siddis entertainment contest programme for the Stavanger Band.

Ideas

Simon made the trip to 13th century bastide village of Monflanquin (above), where Allan and his wife Kirsten have a home to start putting together their ideas on what they hope will be a programme that will lead to the reigning Norwegian National champion claiming its fourth consecutive title.

Sit back and relax

Allan told 4BR: "This is becoming a something of a ritual where we think through and work out initial ideas for Siddis.

Simon is a wonderful sounding board and such an inventive musical mind that we can just sit back and relax and let the ideas flow along with some wonderful local wine.

I can't give exact details of what we have come up with, but we can promise people that it will be an exciting programme aimed at further developing new musical and visual ideas."

Joan of Arc

That should whet the appetite for fans then following last year's winning collaborations which saw the duo produce 'Sainteté: Difficile mais pas impossible' (Sainthood: Difficult but not impossible), about the life of Jean d'Arc.

Simon added: "Having worked with Allan on different projects over the last few years, coming to France offers a pretty unique way of developing ideas.

I have such huge admiration for Allan's musical vision — and it's so refreshing for me as a composer that I can explore just about any topic that we put our minds to."