It's all a matter of taste... or is it?

by Frank Renton

Thanks to the good auspices of Peggy Tomlinson and her timely invitation, I was privileged to be a guest at the Yorkshire Brass Band Championships in Bradford a few weeks ago. As ever, well except when they were renovating it, the Championships were held in St. George’s Hall, a proper concert hall with a proper acoustic and a suitably prestigious venue for a major competition. It mystifies me why so many of the ‘Area’ competitions take place in venues totally unsuited to musical performance - especially musical performance that is part of a competition and that the adjudicators should be able to hear with absolute clarity, but that’s another can of worms that I don’t intend to open here. St. George’s Hall holds many happy memories for me.

I first heard the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli there, I guess an experience that set me off on a life of musicmaking, and my first contest performance with Black Dyke Junior Band took place on the same stage; I later played there many times with the real Black Dyke Mills Band. The grammar school that I attended always held its annual speech day there and, for several years, I was expected to play a trumpet solo accompanied by the music master. I conducted the Yorkshire Railways Band at the Championships there in 1976, and took part in many memorable performances there with the James Shepherd Versatile Brass.

In fact, Jim was the first person I met when I arrived at the hall this year. As smart and as spry as ever, still totally committed to music and passing on his expertise to young people, a real beacon of everything that is good about brass playing and the brass band culture. Almost 20 years ago, I conducted Grimethorpe Colliery band there in the ‘Area’ contest when the test-piece was Journey Into Freedom, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable performances I was ever involved in. Heady times! The first band I heard this year was actually Dinnington Colliery Band, conducted by Jonathon Beatty.....