Midland Area Regional Brass Band Championship

This weekend my Brass Band played at the Division 2 Regional Finals. There's Division 1-4 across the UK and Championship Division is for the Pros. For instance at Midland Area Regionals there were about 10-15 brass bands in each division - Division 2 having 11 entries.

ANYWAYS - you practice 1 piece for about a month straight and everyone in your division performs this piece at the Competition (a bit monotonous for the judges eh??) The judges sit in a curtained off booth in the middle of the concert hall and ring their bell when they want the next band to perform. They have a random draw to see in what order the bands play (just to keep it fair) and our band performed last meaning after the 830 draw we had to sit around until 130 to perform.

Finally it was our turn to perform - I was playing 2nd Baritone and our conductor rewrote the horn feature in the second movement so that I had to play it. (PS horn parts are really high all above the staff!!). I had enough practice but to make a clean go of it took some panache.

The performance went fair enough with a few minor mistakes. I really didn't think we played it our best. After we performed the judges left their 'padded booth' and announce the results. They go through what they heard throughout the day how some bands had the articulations wrong, how some played the wrong tempos/style etc. etc.

He then says it was very apparent who the top two bands were and that the first place band was 5 points above 2nd place. You start with 200 points and every mistake made is minus one point. He said the First place band was an exceptional example of a Division 2 band and did a superb job. At this point I'm rolling my eyes thinking about the little glitches here and there in our performance. They announce the 4th place band - -- -- not us. 3rd place --> not us but whoever won went crazy excited!! 2nd place ---->not us. At this point I was thinking "sh*t" not even top four. Then out of the Blue he says "First place with 186 points, one eight six points, City of Coventry Brass Band!!! hah hah that's right - I'm officially a Division 2 Brass Band Champion :D Heading to National Championships in September!

They also take an average of your score at Regionals each year to see which bands get promoted up a division and which band move down a division. In a most excellent way we've also been promoted to Division 1!! Pretty cool eh??