The Band made the long journey to Desford, near Leicester, on Sunday 26th October for the Leicestershire Brass Band Association own choice contest. Our MD Mark Ager had chosen George Lloyd’s “Diversions on a Bass theme” for our test piece and his knowledge and experience with this piece helped the band immensely in our preparations. The piece was originally commissioned in 1986 of for the Mine Workers’ National Brass Band Championships and with the sponsor of the composition being Bass Breweries the title is something of a play on words with many cognoscenti saying it should be correctly pronounced in the same way as the brewery (or the fish!) rather than the tuba section of a brass band. Whatever the truth is, George Lloyd himself wrote: “This piece is a set of variations. … a number of tunes grow out of the first bar, played by the Basses, which provides the motif for the whole work.”

Our contest secretary, Trevor Laird, had booked the local church hall for a pre-contest warm up and rehearsal and we gathered there at 12:30. The band were in good spirits and a confident mood despite the thermonuclear heater behind the tubas bringing a whole new dimension to the concept of warming up!

We then made our way to Bosworth Academy, a new venue for the contest for this year, where we had drawn to play third out of the eight First Section bands taking part. Adjudicator Paul Norley had the unenviable task of trying to compare eight different pieces played by the competing bands and ranking them in order. Bands had travelled from far and wide - Soham Comrades and Tilbury were there from our own London and Southern Counties Region, along with more local bands from the Midlands Area like Stamford, Bedworth, Oddfellows, Hucknall & Linby, and also Elland Silver Band from Yorkshire.

The band were pleased with their performance but you never know with contesting and the final band to play, Elland, certainly put in a strong performance with another George Lloyd piece (English Heritage) so we were by no means complacent. However when Elland were announced as runners up we knew we were in with a chance of a win and the confirmation of this was greeted by jubilant celebrations by the band and our supporters, the majority of whom had stayed behind to wait for the results.

MD Mark went on stage to collect the huge winner’s shield from Paul Norley who told Mark that he really liked our approach and the orchestral sound and style needed for George Lloyd’s music.