Desford Colliery Band

The All England Masters International
Gala Concert
Conductor: Jason Katsikaris
Corn Exchange
Cambridge
Saturday 23rd May

Having to play a concert the night before a major competition is hard work: Harder still when there are less than 100 people in the audience to entertain.

Good folk

The 2009 Masters weekend got off to a fairly low key start on Saturday night, despite the Trojan effort from the 2008 reigning champions and their Australian conductor.  The good folk of Cambridge it seems had better things to do – including, by all accounts, turning up at two other brass band concerts within a two mile radius on the very same night. It made you wonder how many bums on seats they had?

Decent show

Those who didn’t make it to the Corn Exchange (and there were plenty) missed a decent old show from Desford too – with a batch of quality soloists and a lightweight programme that although understandably a little uneven in execution, was still well worth the price of the ticket (£10 – plus an extra couple of quid to sit in the raised seats. Mind you, there was plenty of choice)

Right from the word go Jason Katsikaris knew he was in for a hard nights graft behind the very badly placed microphone – and to his eternal credit he never let his enthusiasm wane – eventually winning over a pretty apathetic bunch with his personable approach and dry humour. The standing ovation at the end was never so hard earned, or so well deserved.   

Slick and professional

Desford were slick and professional too – a little scrappy and hanging on by the seat of their pants in places it must be said, but still admirably polished despite the more obvious moments when reacquainting themselves with familiar repertoire caused a furrowed brow or two (there was the odd amendment to the published programme).

Bugsy Malone

The opening ‘March Lorraine’ was taken at a well paced swagger (despite the errant bass drum to start) and was soon followed by a colourful and entertaining ‘Slaughter on 10th Avenue’ – although the soprano player was winged by a shot from a Bugsy Malone pie gun, and the tubas growled at times like the V12 engine on the Anthill Mob’s getaway car.

Jacksy

That was the kick up the jacksy the band needed to up the ante, and the rest of the first half saw high quality solo contributions from Gary Wyatt on ‘Bells of Peover’ (played with a cultured appreciation of style) and Robin Taylor on ‘Pantomime’ - which was as polished as his stage shoes (and you could see your face in them from 20 yards away) and also delivered with a classy panache.

Add to that a neat bit of Jelly Roll Morton on ‘Black Bottomed Stomp’, and suave ‘Letter from Home’ (with the bass end now as smooth in the torque stakes as Jenson Button’s F1 car), and all that was needed was a well placed bit of musical cheese (as recommended by the MD) to round off an entertaining first half.

Ten pints

’Arrivaderci Roma’ – played neatly by the three troms, (although it did contain what suspiciously sounded like a bloke dry retching down a lavatory the remnants of ten pints of lager, three flaming sambucas and a plate of spaghetti on four separate occasions – or was it meant to be like that?) was ripe enough, but the Elvis Presley heart attack inducing triple cheeseburger ‘American Trilogy’ was slap bang on the money. All that was missing was the 1972 rhinestone suit and wiggling hips.

Finally, the audience got into the swing of things, and the excellent second half saw Desford start to employ the party tricks.

Stylish

’Saints Fantasy’ - complete with New Orleans funeral marching band, and a cracking ‘Melody Shop’ march led into Richard Brown on tip top form with ‘Feelings’ – with the ensemble and main solo lines in each played with stylish intelligence.

Aussie jokes

The MD was now enjoying himself too (even the Aussie jokes were well received) and the band produced a super little cameo on ‘Charmaine’ (which sounded suspiciously like the last couple of bars were nicked from ‘Cornet Carillon’) and a high tempo whip through Tom Davoren’s original (and best) version of ‘Phoenix Rising’.

Hard of hearing

A nice change of pace with ‘Evelyn Glennie’s ‘Little Prayer’ (which is perhaps the most un-prayer like little prayer, given it has a middle eight that can be heard in Timbuktu – the Good Lord is not as hard of hearing as the composer), was followed by a tremendous bit of tuned percussion playing from Emily Cumbie, on ‘Robbin Harry’, that Miss Glennie would have been proud of herself.

Rousing

That just left a rousing old bit of Khachaturian with ‘Fire’ from the ballet ‘Gayeneh’ and the MD left stage right to an equally rousing reception (if that is the right word for the sound emanating from the hardy 100 souls) that was fully merited.

A high tempo ‘Dance of the Tumblers’ and that was that – a very enjoyable concert from a band and MD who did their jobs with an admirable degree of stoic professionalism and no little amount of classy polish.  The hard work was well worth it in the end.

Iwan Fox

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