Double Champions!

The Flowers Band successfully defend it's Butlins Mineworkers Championship crown last weekend!

As defending champions, we were invited to do a gala concert on centre stage on Friday night, in front of approximately 2,500 people.  The band was on fine form, as were our soloists Principal Trombone Robert Marsh and Solo Baritone Ben Stratford.  We featured a brand new piece, by Ben, which was very well recieved by the audience.  For our encore, which was demanded by the audience, we finished with Toccata in D Minor.

On Saturday, we were drawn number 1 in the set piece section, where we played Un Vie de Matelot by Robert Farnon. We led right from the start and gave a performance to remember.  All of our soloists performed with such class, that even the likes of Carlton Main Frickley, GUS and Desford could not stop us winning the first day's competition.

Special mention is needed for Paul Richards and Andrew Smith, who showed that they are some of the best cornet players in the country!

At this point we didn't know where we had come on the previous day's competition, so we gave our all in the entertainment section.  We played number 9 on Sunday, where we produced some fine playing with visuals, lighting and dry ice!

Our programme started with Steve Jones, James Andrews and Max Ireland playing the intro to Blackbird Special.  The rest of the band came on in sections, to finish with a fully stood band for our first item.

Fear Not was arranged especially for Butlins.  It was originally a piece for female solo voice and piano.  Our MD Paul Holland skillfully arranged this piece for Andrew Smith.  The playing of Andrew during this solo was simply sublime!

Even before the audience had finished claping we went into Romani Fire Dance again composed especially for Butlins Contest.

Eric Whitacre is fast becoming one of the world's leading choral composers.  The Seal Lullaby was set to a specially made film to accompany the piece by Flowers Band.  4barsrest commented that this piece was the highlight of the day!

Our finale was a piece written by Andrew Duncan called A Manchester Tale.  Complete with another specially made film, dry ice, lighting and an air raid siren, expertly operated by 3rd cornet player Chris Hicks.

A Manchester Tale brought the house down as the audidence were clapping before the last chord had finished.

We came a disspointing 4th on the Sunday, but when our points were added together we were the overal winners!!

We are looking forward to next year's event already and hoping to be the first band since the new two legged system, to do a hat-trick of victories!