15/1/2018 Brass by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA Mondays are my first brass band rehearsal evening of the week. I love my band. It’s certainly not fashionable or especially popular, but there’s just something fantastic about making music with 24 other friends. I’ve been doing this for over forty
4/1/2018 Stands up by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA The Christmas break is over and we are back up and running at band. No doubt many of our lips will be a little soft, but we’ll have two hours tonight to blow the cobwebs away and start preparing ourselves
281/365 Horn by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA I’ve been playing at Newark Wedding Fair at the exhibition centre. Carlton Brass are angling for more bookings so we have formed a quintet too. I’ve been playing the cornet part, my first time doing so in a quintet. My lip
268/365 Rehearsal by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA Hello pop pickers, it’s that time of night for our band rehearsal. You can possibly tell from my music what we are playing: At the Sign of the Swinging Cymbal – the theme tune to Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman’s radio show back
257/365 So lonely by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA We were practicing Mansions of the Lord tonight, which requires Andy to perform off stage. We made him go and sit by himself in the corner. So lonely over there.
“176/365 Contest Day” by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA I love brass band contest days. My band Carlton Brass are playing at the Brass on the Grass contest at Denby Potteries today. This is an entertainments contest, where each band has to play a programme of 25 minutes of
“166/365 Last Rehearsal” by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA Tonight was our last rehearsal in this lovely room in Burton Joyce. It’s a shame, but the building was proving to be too expensive, plus the accoustics were pretty bad. Far too much boom and echo for a brass band.
“159/365 Champs” by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA Our brass band organisation has had a lot of success over the years. Not as much as some of the top bands in the country, but we’ve won some national competitions here and there; most recently the 2015 Midlands Section Section
It’s that time of year, once more, where dozens of brass bands descend on Bedworth to participate in the annual Midlands Regional Brass Band Championships. My band, Carlton Brass, were competing in the First Section; hoping to improve on a disappointing 14th place last year. We were playing Land of
Maynard Ferguson Legacy Big Band, a photo by rutty on Flickr. This weekend saw me spend 48 hours or so in the most bracing part of England – Skegness for my favourite brass band event of the year, the Butlin’s Mineworkers Championships. Thousands of brass banders managed to get there
I spent the best part of last Friday in the lovely Lancashire area of Tameside, where our band were taking part in the traditional Whit Friday Marches contest. For the uninitiated this happens every year (on Whit Friday, natch) and involves many dozens of Britain’s brass bands descending on Tameside
