This weekend saw us arrive at our annual trip to the SCABA entertainment contest in The Hawth, Crawley. This is a great opportunity for the band as we get another outing in a contest setting and the chance to get some new repertoire under our belts!
After last weekend’s successful concert we knew that our set was a force to be reckoned with, starting with Sykes’s Firedance to get our blood pumping. After that, our lovely flugel player, Amelia Young, took to the stage to melt the hearts of the audience and the adjudicator, Michael Fowles, by playing ‘Eyes of a Child’- off by heart! Her “quality flugel sound” (quote from our remarks!) not only blew everyone away but also earned Otterbourne the Best Soloist prize, a fantastic and well deserved achievement!
However, this was not the only prize we walked away with on Sunday. Our concert march, ‘Emblem of Unity’, was a fantastic choice from Melvin and meant that we could prove ourselves as a band- which led to us being awarded Best March as well!
If you didn’t think that was entertaining enough we took it up a notch by featuring two fantastic trombone players. Nick West and Susan White are an indomitable force and they certainly proved it with an arrangement of Herbert L Clarke’s duet, ‘Cousins’. Starting off their duet on tenor trombone they then moved to euphonium, over to alto trombone and back to tenor to finish. All in the space of 3 minutes! To quote Mr Fowles again, it was “impressive stuff!”. We are not a band that like to leave without a bang and so the finale to Dean Jones’s ‘Glorifico Aeternum’ became our ending to the set. It was a great way to finish off and left the band smiling from ear to ear.
Although we were pipped to the post for first place by Verwood band- who also played fantastically, we were very happy with our performance and it has put us in high spirits for the summer season! Another huge thank you to Melvin for bringing us a fantastic set, it pushed us to work even harder and play even better. SCABA was a great opportunity for us to show off our lovely soloists and the band had a fun day as well!
Make sure that you come and see us on June 12th or July 3rd in Otterbourne Village Hall for what is going to be another great performance!
Article by Sophie Hart