Carlton Main Frickley Colliery

Conductor: Brian Grant
Sheffield Cathedral
Saturday 18th December

One of the many Christmas Band Concerts took place at Sheffield Cathedral, where the Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band combined with the Cathedral Choir to present a program of Christmas music to a capacity audience. The band led by Brian Grant were in good form and undoubtedly pleased the audience who responded with prolonged applause to several items; none more so than to Kirsty Abbotts' rendition of the 'Meditation' from 'Thais' by Massenet. This was a memorable performance, displaying exquisite beauty of tone and quality musicianship. No wonder this lady took the best principal cornet for the second year running at the ‘Brass in Concert Championship'. Not far behind was another young lady soloist as Claire Taylor brought the ‘Wow' factor to her performance of Mozart's ‘Queen of the Night'. This was indeed Soprano playing of an extremely high standard with a full sound throughout the range presented with seemingly little effort. These two soloists were worth the £10.00 admission fee without the additional items.

The band commenced with ‘Fanfare for the Common Man', which suited the acoustics of the Cathedral and got the programme off to a good start. However, the playing was not without balance problems. Typical Christmas fare was provided with ‘Santa Claustrophobia,' a pot-pourri of well known secular Christmas tunes; and two marches by Peter Graham – ‘The Spirit of Christmas'and ‘The Shining Star'.

The arrangement by Ray Farr of Stravinsky's ‘Firebird' tested the Band and 'Polovtsian Dances' from 'Prince Igor' was given a spirited performance with a well driven ending. With the many demands placed on the Band during the Christmas period it is inevitable that some replacements are necessary and this may have been the cause of some imbalance and intonation problems. It was noticed that generally it is a young band and with such stars as Kirsty and Claire and budding thirteen year old Ben Dixon on Eb Bass a bright future can be foreseen.

Carlton will join forces with The Sheffield Citadel Band for a charity concert in aid of the Tsunami appeal on Friday 11th February at the Citadel, Psalter Lane, Sheffield. This will be quite an experience for Ben Dixon who normally plays with the Junior Band at Sheffield Citadel but who no doubt will be in the Carlton line up on that evening.

Norman Short.

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