Reflections of Freedom

Whitburn Band
Conductors: Andrew Duncan and Michael Marzella
Guest Soloist: Martin Wilson

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Bleeding clever bloke this Andy Duncan.  Composer, arranger, conductor, tuba virtuoso, teacher, visiting professor, and adjudicator - you name it he can do it, and do it bleeding fantastically well. If only he was a Rhodes scholar and an Olympic gymnast he would have the whole caboodle to shout about. This bloke couldn't have more strings to his bow if he were shooting arrows with a harp. 

This new recording by the Whitburn Band is in fact a showcase for those considerable talents. All 12 tracks have either been composed or arranged by the man who was once a young player with them, and who subsequently returned to home after a musical journey that took in the Guildhall School of Music, Napier University, the Halle Orchestra, the RNCM, Salford and Huddersfield Universities and no less than six wins at the Spennymoor Brass in Concert Contest for his arrangement skills. All this and he is still only 42 years of age.   

The Whitburn Band are of course a fair bit older.  They may have been around since 1870, but it has been in the last 25 years or so that they have become one of the leading bands in the country (and we are talking about the UK here, for all those parochial Devolution lads and lasses north of Hadrian's Wall). Strong, powerful and as Scottish as a tartan tin of shortbread and a pint of Double Diamond Heavy, Whitburn has a been a fine ambassador for Scottish banding since the days when Peter Parkes took his special brand of contest winning formula north to West Lothian in the mid 1970's. Since then the name of Whitburn has featured regularly in the prize lists of our major contests, with a runners up place at the 1990 European to add to the Grand Shield victory of 1991 and 14 Scottish Championships. Even after he finally left (although he is still the President of the Band) they continued to prosper and in 2001 they came 5th at the Open, only to better that in 2003 when they gained a tremendous runners up place on the excerpts from "The Planets". 

All this and they still have time according to the sleeve notes to play at major charity events and Scotland's international football matches - which given the parlous state of the game there seems to be one and the same thing.  On this release though, they also show that they are a very impressive band as well.

Reflections of Freedom takes its title from the original composition of the same name which Andy Duncan wrote for the US Army Brass Band based in Washington DC and which is a programmatic piece based on the American folk song, Bringing in the Sheaves.  It is one of the three original compositions on the release, all of which are substantial works and also include the Trombone Concerto, performed by the excellent Martin Wilson (another talented old boy) and the atmospheric Hebridean Suite.

All three of these works have the mark of an intelligent musical thought process. The Hebridean Suite for instance is a four-movement work that draws heavily, but cleverly on traditional Celtic/Gaelic material. Unlike many alliteratively rhyming works of the same genre that sound as authentic as Mel Gibson's sense of historical perspective in the film Braveheart, this never has the feeling of cloying sentimentality or over the top fiddledy diddledy duelling bagpipes. This is real folk music treated with respect and not showered with inappropriate make believe.

The same can also be said of the powerful Reflections of Freedom - a celebration of both Scottish emigration to the United States (often forcibly) and of the grand buildings of State to be found in Washington DC itself.  Again, it is an intelligent work, formidably descriptive yet never over elaborate, with the central theme only fully realised at the very end.  It is a very classy work, and very well played by the band.

The final original work is the Trombone Concerto, here given an excellent reading by Martin Wilson. It is a powerful performance by a player of immense talent who commands the different genres in each of the three movements with ease.   It is a very "orchestral" bit of playing - the Tommy Dorsey mimicking in the first Allegro doesn't quite sit as easily as the more direct playing in the other movements, but it is still a tremendous bit of work. Again though, the lasting impression left on the listener is of a musical work of intelligence - nothing is over cooked like a deep fried Mars bar to satisfy the musical palette.

The other 9 works on the disc are all arrangements, the most impressive of which are the two Shostakovich items, Scherzo from Symphony No. 10 and the March from the Jazz Suite No. 2.   Each retains the flavours if not all the colourings of the originals with the brittle hardness and soulless power of the musical portrait of Joseph Stalin in the Scherzo impressively brought to life (with some outstanding euph playing in particular, as throughout the disc).  Old Uncle Joe once said that he thought of post War Russia and its people as a great beach of golden sand, so no one he said should shed a tear when he had to sacrifice a few handfuls of it in the Communist cause.  Nice chap wasn't he?

The band's soloists also show off their talents to fine effect, with Eleanor Ferguson a very sympathetic and delicate performer in Eriskay Love Lilt and James Chamberlain giving a top notch bit of flugel playing on the old Jack Segal number, Scarlet Ribbons (very nicely accompanied on piano by the bands second euph player, Anne Crookston). Meanwhile, Gordon Jenkins who was the solo prizewinner at the 2003 British Open displays a fine soprano voice (although he is under-utilised somewhat) in a rather short version of the haunting theme from the great old spaghetti western, Once Upon a Time in the West. Not quite as chillingly elegiac as the original with Henry Fonda as the blue eyed baddie, but good stuff nonetheless.  

Andy Duncan also shows that he can master the music from that other big screen leviathan, Titanic, with a clever selection of the highlights (made better by not having to hear the drone of Celine Dion) of the dreadful film, which may have been bad, but not as bad as Lou Grade's all time stinker of a turkey, "Raise the Titanic" which the old man caustically remarked, "It would have been cheaper to have made if we drained the Atlantic".

There is also a fine arrangement of Alone with my Thoughts, which features the lovely voice of Rona Morrison, but also, the Clarsach, West Lothian Children's Choir and the Highland Bagpipes as well! It may sound as appetising a mixture as a haggis blancmange, but it works splendidly with the old octopus player giving his all to supplement a real emotional homage to a fallen soldier of the Falklands War.

That leaves a subtle arrangement of the traditional Scottish melody Ye Banks and Braes and the only disappointment for us in a very high class release, the rather "bolted together" Cartoon Classics, which just like others who have tried to replicate the musical schizophrenic nature of the originals, just fails because of lack of colour, timbre and a general sense of wackiness (even with a Scottish Porky Pig and Fred Flintsone impression). Trying to get a brass band to bring to the minds eye young Bart racing through the streets of Springfield on his skateboard in the manic opening sequence of  "The Simpsons" is an impossible task, and however clever Mr Duncan surely is, even he has failed to conquer this one. (Strange though, as the bands second trom has an almost perfect anagram name of Bart Simpson)

This is a fine release by Andy Duncan and Whitburn, and one which has been enhanced by the excellent post production work of the doyen of producers, Brian Hillson who has mixed the different colours and shades of the individual items to superb effect - especially the more exposed items such as  Scarlet Ribbons and Alone with My Thoughts and by Andy Duncan's very informative sleeve notes.  We were just a bit disappointed with the cover, which features a rather tame portrait of the Lincoln Memorial at night - no real reflection of the great freedom icon it became as the backdrop to Martin Luther King's amazing speech, but this is a small grumble on a quality production.  

Iwan Fox

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