Full results of the Midlands Regional Championships, held in Bedworth on 13&14 March 2010

Mike Kilroy reports from the Midlands Regional Championships in Bedworth

Full results of the North West Regional Championships, held at the Winter Gardens, Blackpool on 14 March 2010

Full results of the West of England Championships, held at the Riviera Centre, Torquay on 13&14 March

Joanne Sykes reports from the West of England Championships in Torquay

Alan Jenkins reports from the North West Regional Championships in Blackpool

Full results of the Scottish Championships, held at the Rothes Halls in Glenrothes on 13&14 March 2010

Kenneth Crookston reports from the Scottish Championships in Glenrothes

Full results from the Yorkshire Regional Championships, held at St. George's Hall, Bradford, on 6&7 March

Kenneth Crookston reports from the Yorkshire Regional Championships in Bradford

Rodney Newton Percy Fletcher's Labour and Love, this year's 3rd Section Regional test-piece, and looks at the life of its composer

Frank Renton reflects on the current debate regarding young composers and their exposure in the band contest marketplace.

Rodney Newton surveys the life and works of Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen, Composer-in-Residence at this year’s RNCM Festival of Brass, with particular reference to his large catalogue of works for brass band

Kenneth Crookston meets the Brass Band of Battle Creek, based in Michigan in the USA, and discovers that there is much more to this remarkable ensemble than an occasional get-together of brass superstars.

Brass bands are often criticised by those outside the fraternity for not being able to play swing and jazz in an authentic manner. Rodney Newton considers this topic with the help of Dr. Robin Dewhurst, Tony Fisher and Allan Withington

by Kenneth Crookston It seems a distant memory now, but the Scottish Open Brass Band Championship struggled to make a mark when it was established in Glasgow in 2003, beset as it was by late withdrawals, financial deficits and a venue that was just too big to allow the audience it attracted to generate an atmosphere conducive to a good day’s contesting.

by Dr. Roy Newsome

I get quite angry at all the griping by certain members of the brass band public - and press - about adjudicators, who are not in a position to bite back. They make their decisions, honestly and impartially, announce them to the world and have to live with them. They can only sit back and ‘take it on the chin’. It’s often said that adjudicating is not an exact science. Arthur Butterworth explains it like this in an article which appears on the website of the Association of Brass Band Adjudicators (ABBA): ‘While it may be possible for a listener – an adjudicator – to state a personal preference for one performance more than another, it is not possible to measure such preference in hard and fast arithmetical terms and say without contradiction that such and such a performance is the “best” in the same way that a referee or umpire can decide the outcome of a game.’

by Frank Renton

The British Open was a super day this year; after all, what could be much better than listening to music in a great concert hall and being able to meet, and chat, with old friends between performances? The piece chosen as the set test, Titan’s Progress by Hermann Pallhulber, is a monster, and few bands managed to sufficiently master the technical demands to take their performances completely into the realms of great music-making. Having said that, I thought the performances by the bands placed first and second were truly awe-inspiring. The piece was, of course, written for Brass Band Oberösterreich and its conductor, Hannes Buchegger, to play in the own-choice section of the 2007 European Championships. I was backstage for that performance rather than in the auditorium, but the audience reaction was tremendous, and what I heard was mightily impressive, although Oberösterreich is a mightily impressive ensemble with the technical mastery to play virtually anything well. I seem to remember, though, that the adjudicators didn’t think much of the performance!

by Kenneth Crookston

It’s only three weeks since I wrote in this publication about all the passion going out of brass band contesting, recalling the ‘good old days’, when adjudicators would be chased for their lives by defeated bandsmen, to be defended on the station platform by the winning band’s players. Thankfully, nothing ever happens like that nowadays - at least that was the case when we published that particular article. However, seven days later, events following the 157th British Open Championship in Birmingham appear to have precipitated the modern-day banding equivalent of World War III.

Thanks to a bumper entry in our competition to win tickets to see Hayley Westenra and Mnozil Brass, we have secured additional prizes, meaning a total of six winners.