Enderby Band organisation

St George's Day Concert
St James the Greater Church
Enderby
Sunday 23rd April

The dragon of doom predicting the end of the brass band world – in Leicestershire at least - was slain at Enderby Band Organisation's St. George's Day concert given by their four bands to a capacity audience in Leicester's fine Renaissance-style church of St. James the Greater. The church, a scaled down model of St. Marks cathedral in Venice, has a near perfect acoustic for bands.

Dave Andrews of BBC Radio Leicester was the consummately professional compere.

The Junior Band, ably conducted by Samantha McClumpha, opened the concert with a set highlighting Lynn Hunt and Ian Reeds in an expressive cornet duet version of 'O Sole Mio' and finished with a sparkling rhythmic account of 'I Will Follow Him' from the film 'Sister Act'. The Juniors displayed musical imagination as well as solid technical skills.

The Youth Band, in Trevor Hounsome's safe hands, showed why they were rated top in entertainment at this year's Youth Band Entertainment Championships at Blackpool. They presented selections from their Blackpool programme including dramatic renditions from Jacob de Haan's suite 'Dakota' and Liz Day on euphonium showing  how she richly deserved her soloist's prize. The highlight for me, however, was William O'Brien's cornet solo contribution to the Alan Hovhaness 'Prayer of St. Gregory'. Will's glorious tone, with the added bloom of the church acoustic, inspired the audience in this deeply spiritual music. The band brought us back to earth with Stephen Bulla's 'Kennesaw Mountain Blues' with idiomatic jazz phrasing of a quality rarely heard from even our top bands.

Proud parents watched Sarah Ross and Tom Cameron of the Juniors and Leone Murphy and Sophie Wilkins of the Youth Band receive attainment awards kindly donated by Blaby Meridian Rotary Club.

Next came a surprise: realising that many wind players in the area are without a band, Enderby have shown stunning innovation by forming a Wind Band. Is this development unique within the brass band world? This was the band's first public performance. Everyone was delighted by their sweet tuneful sound, especially in Ray Steadman-Allen's arrangement of the 'Elegy' from John Ireland's 'Downland Suite', beautifully shaped by conductor Joe Clarbour. Henry Mancini's 'Pink Panther' and Scott Joplin's 'Entertainer 'showed this new band has a great sense of fun as well as musical finesse.

Firmly back in the brass band ethos, the Enderby Senior Band showed the development achieved during the year with Huw Thomas at the helm. The band demonstrated  improved musical discipline with a higher level of technical and tonal refinement than heard from them previously. Their programme demonstrated musicality and wide range of style opening with Alford's 'Standard of St. George' (what a fine march this is when played well!), through Antony Szafranek's molto Lusheroso trombone solo 'Stardust', to an exhilarating dash through Shostakovitch's 'Festival Overture'. St. George was also honoured with invigorating  but tasteful versions of 'Jerusalem' and 'Land of Hope and Glory' to bring the concert to a flag waving end.

^back to top