The Leyland Band

Conductor: Michael Fowles

Yeadon Town Hall
Saturday 8th November 2003

The Overture ‘Ruslan and Ludmila' opened this concert by the current All England Masters Champions, the Leyland Band, which was taken at a rather quick tempo where some of the detail was lost. Having said that it was an exiting start to the evening.

The band's Flugel horn player Lucy Murphy then played ‘My Ain Folk' in superb style with some excellent band backing before the band performed "Music from Murder on the Orient Express" and Howard Snell's arrangement of "Hoe Down".
The 1950 TV series Peter Gunn had an excellent theme tune and the band gave it the full treatment in Henry Mancini‘s arrangement, whilst Solo Horn player Donna Lewis was the next soloist in a song made famous by Roberta Flack - "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face".

This is a lovely song and the Donna played it in a relaxing style and again with excellent band accompaniments. Music from the film "Ok" in "Someone to Watch Over Me" which had a nice feel to it with some excellent sounds all round the band. The first half of the concert ended with music by Eric Ball. Composed in 1962 his "Kingdom Triumphant" is one of the most moving pieces of music you could wish to hear and the band produced a wonderful musical reading with some fine playing all round making this an excellent ending to the first half.

Music from Spain opened the second half with the exciting ‘Malaguena' followed by the first performance of "Air de Ballet" arranged for the bands principal euphonium Bill Millar. This music by Massenet arranged by Ted Tarling gave the audience the chance to hear what a super player Bill is, with excellent phrasing and a lovely tone, this was playing at its best. Derek Ashmore's arrangement of ‘Dance of the Tumblers' was followed by ‘Keystone Cops' arranged by Phillip Littlemore giving a nice flow to the concert. James Gourlay's "Alpine Tuba" followed in which Chris Doran gave a most amusing performance with plenty of help from the band! Glennie's moving ‘A Little Prayer' arranged Robert Childs showed the quality of sound only heard in the best bands with some excellent dynamics. For the Finale the band chose music by Tchaikovsky in Symphony No 2 ‘The Little Russian'. This was a well controlled performance to end a very good concert and as an encore the band played ‘Sing Sing Sing' in the big dance band style with some superb playing on kit.

The large audience went home pleased with what they had heard, and well done to the band and also Leeds City Council for once again providing top class entertainment.

The next one to look out for is in Morley Town Hall on November 22nd when the Cory Band will be taking the stage.

David Tinker

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