Oxford & District Brass Band Association (ODBBA) Contest

Today we competed at the Oxfordshire and District Brass Band Association Contest, our first contest since March 2020, and placed 5th in the third section with Olympus (Philip Harper).

...but that was only the finale of what has been a challenging 48 hours for the Band!

On Thursday we found out that our Musical Director, Thomas Dunne, would be unavailable to lead us in the contest due to ill health. It was decided that the Band would only withdraw if a replacement couldn't be found. Cue a mad dash by Kevin and Kerry to find someone who knew the piece well enough and was willing to conduct the Band with very minimal rehearsal time (in the end, they got just 20 minutes in the warm-up room).

Enter Josh Ruck, who did a phenomenal job of settling the band and giving us a well needed morale boost before leading us on stage to a brilliant performance! We can't thank Josh enough for helping us today, it would have been a massive shame to put aside months of work. As it is, we're now in a brilliant position to move onto the Area Contest in April!

Special mention as well to Thomas Dunne: without his work with the Band, we wouldn't have had the confidence to achieve what we did today; and to Kevin for leading last night's final rehearsal after just announcing the tricky situation that the Band in which had found itself!