Dreams come true as American champion makes history in Perth

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.

Fast-forward six years and the Scottish Brass Band Association (SBBA) now presides over one of the most enjoyable events on the banding calendar, generously supported by Besson with a full and competitive line-up of bands in a fabulous venue providing a terrific day of entertainment fit to satisfy any lover of good brass band music. Over that period, two of the ‘giants’ of Scottish banding have each managed a brace of victories, while the border raiders of Hepworth and Fishburn have also managed to take the trophy south. Six years ago, however, it would have been beyond the wildest dreams of anyone associated with either the SBBA or Fountain City Brass Band to imagine that a band formed in the USA only a year before the Scottish Open itself would be heading back across the Atlantic Ocean with the Scottish Open trophy and £3,000 in the bank, having given what is regarded by many seasoned observers as the finest performance that the event has ever witnessed. Having performed impressively in Friday evening’s Gala Concert and drawn to play fifth of the 17 competing bands, Fountain City and its conductor, Joe Parisi, had chosen to play Bertrand Moren’s challenging Dreams, part of which the band had used to conclude its performance at the Brass in Concert Championship a fortnight earlier. Once again given with great conviction, this was to be a performance in which fine control, cultured solo playing and outstanding musicality were to the fore (trombonist, Will Hess, performed brilliantly in taking the prize for the Best Instrumentalist), and, while it wasn’t absolutely without one or two minor technical flaws, by the time Dr. Parisi had driven his talented musicians through the electrifying finale with as much energy as the Large Hadron Collider, complete with a perfectly-paced accelerando al fine, there could have been have little doubt that this was going to be the one to beat.