Fresh from their top 10 performance at the National Final at the Royal Albert Hall, Woodfalls provided a predominately local audience with a traditional, heart-warming concert under the direction of Phil Randell, featuring wartime classics set alongside more contemporary repertoire.

Conviction

This was aptly shown by Dan Price’s ‘Peacemakers’. Commissioned by their professional MD Dr Robert Childs for Grimethorpe’s 2014 Brass in Concert appearance, Woodfalls performed it with a level of conviction that was very much in keeping with the heroic sense of remembrance it conjured up in the mind’s eye. 

Trombone soloist Scott Stewart played a touching rendition of Sinatra’s ‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning’ that warmed the audience, whilst the cleverly realised ‘Big Band Tribute’, showed off the band’s ability to capture stylistic nuance in a manner that Glenn Miller would have been proud of.

Entertainment value

With slick choreography to add to the entertainment value, it was met with rapturous applause - especially when it as later announced that one audience member had actually heard the original Glenn Miller band in Salisbury during the war years.

The Remembrance event was full of poignant moments of reflection, aided by Woodfalls excellent second half contribution that added to the sense of both personal loss and celebration of ultimate communal victory. 

Sophie Hart