Australian Concert Bands

I also was playing in the band that came second. In fact I was sitting in front of hornist on the day.
I agree with Hornist. A very good result for this band as the new MD put a lot of effort in to getting them sounding great on the day.

Its a pity that I didnt get to hear all of South Pacific. By the time we got off stage, and put our instruments away, South Pacific had already played Kelly and their sacred number

Their own choice was really good though. What was it called again?

Just as an aside, what did you guys think of Kelly, the test piece?

South Pacific's own choice was called
Hill Country Holiday, by Robert Sheldon.

Or as the announcer on stage called. 'Hill Country Cottage'

As for my thoughts on Kelly. It was an ok piece BUT, the 3 page errata sheet was a bit rediculous.
Why should the bands fork out all this money for a piece of music that comes with 3 pages worth of mistakes.
I know Cliffy spent many hours going through the parts himself fixing mistakes and adding things.

Yeah, same with our MD. Both he and our Librarian spent hours fixing up the scores. Even then, we still found quite a few that weren't on the sheet.

Still. It was quite a tricky piece, especially the bass / bari sax / bass clari little bop bop bits just after the opening. That bit had to gel straight up!!

I think everyone let out a huge Groan when they first saw Kelly, but in the end it sounded alright.

Just needed some hard work.

Want to say well done to cliffy for the hard work with SPC, it was a great day and the band had a great time.

bensimon wrote:Yeah, same with our MD. Both he and our Librarian spent hours fixing up the scores. Even then, we still found quite a few that weren't on the sheet.

Still. It was quite a tricky piece, especially the bass / bari sax / bass clari little bop bop bits just after the opening. That bit had to gel straight up!!

At first I didn't think a lot of Kelly but the more I looked at score and as rehearsals went on and it got better we started to bring out the music in the piece and I think the band generally liked it in the end. It is deceptively difficult in places rhythmically. Yes the bass line part from bar 9 took quite some rehearsal time to get it to Gel and bar 113 which is the ostinato in the tbones and basses was also a tricky section. I thought some of the melodies were a little tacky but there is also some nice writing in it and we enjoyed working on all the slow stuff in the middle. I think the ending is quite exiting also.

We bought a new set of finger cymbals for our auxilliary percussionist and she loved trying to produce the sound we wanted from them. One weekend a couple of weeks before the states, white stick waver, tbone and myself were in Gilgandra and we just happened to stumble across some anvils in an antique shop (the only shop open in Gil on a Sunday ). So myself and our bands secretary (who was also there) tried out many anvils and decided on one and then 5 minutes later we came back into the same shop to buy a really old hammer to go with it. This same percussionist got use of the anvil as well so I guess our preparations with Kelly ended up being quite a bit of fun too

bensimon wrote:Yeah, same with our MD. Both he and our Librarian spent hours fixing up the scores. Even then, we still found quite a few that weren't on the sheet.

Still. It was quite a tricky piece, especially the bass / bari sax / bass clari little bop bop bits just after the opening. That bit had to gel straight up!!

Yeah we kept finding mistakes that won't on the errata sheet and then needing to fix the parts again, copy them again and put back into the folders. Many thanks to tbone and our band's secreatary for their help in thie area.

TBone wrote:I think everyone let out a huge Groan when they first saw Kelly, but in the end it sounded alright.

Just needed some hard work.

Want to say well done to cliffy for the hard work with SPC, it was a great day and the band had a great time.

I thought it was just our principal trombone that let out a huge groan Maybe your groan was so loud that you thought it was the whole band
Just kidding!!

[quote="white stick waver"]South Pacific's own choice was called
Hill Country Holiday, by Robert Sheldon.

Or as the announcer on stage called. 'Hill Country Cottage'

Someone in Gilgandra called it Hill Billy Cottage. I won't mention any names though

The Hillbillys have to live somewhere Cliffy

TBone wrote:The Hillbillys have to live somewhere Cliffy

Where would you suggest???

Jenolan Caves Perhaps.

At first I didn't think a lot of Kelly but the more I looked at score and as rehearsals went on and it got better we started to bring out the music in the piece and I think the band generally liked it in the end. It is deceptively difficult in places rhythmically. Yes the bass line part from bar 9 took quite some rehearsal time to get it to Gel and bar 113 which is the ostinato in the tbones and basses was also a tricky section. I thought some of the melodies were a little tacky but there is also some nice writing in it and we enjoyed working on all the slow stuff in the middle. I think the ending is quite exiting also.

We bought a new set of finger cymbals for our auxilliary percussionist and she loved trying to produce the sound we wanted from them. One weekend a couple of weeks before the states, white stick waver, tbone and myself were in Gilgandra and we just happened to stumble across some anvils in an antique shop (the only shop open in Gil on a Sunday Smile ). So myself and our bands secretary (who was also there) tried out many anvils and decided on one and then 5 minutes later we came back into the same shop to buy a really old hammer to go with it. This same percussionist got use of the anvil as well so I guess our preparations with Kelly ended up being quite a bit of fun too

I liked the ending. Lot of work in the woodwinds though!

Some of the slow stuff was nice. As we didnt have either a bassoon or an oboe, we did the solo with euph and trumpet. i did the trumpet part, and the euph player we had wasnt able to come at the last minute, so we had our other eupho step up and play it! We probably drove the people nuts in the park we were staying in the morning before state cause we went over it a fair bit. It wasnt a hard part technically, but needed the right style - very legato.

So you guys got an anvil? Cool!! We had a bit of railway line that we were gonna use, but it was too heavy to lug around from PMQ!

Yeah we had an anvil. Tbone did bring several different sizes of pipes to band one night which we were going to use but we bought the anvil in Gil. After we bouht it tbone realised that he had two of them sitting in his shed as well!!!