First published in The Press, July 2007

As a rookie brass band player, this reviewer has had the message hammered home on numerous occasions, ‘You’ve got to be good to play quietly’. Listening to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band go from the furious-and-glorious raise-the-roof volume of Shostakovich’s Festive Overture to a sound so soft it was almost a whisper in Arnold’s Scottish Dances, it was clear just how very good Grimethorpe Colliery Band is. The trophy at the front of the stage (nearly as big as the basses on the back row) is their latest bit of silverware as National Champions of Great Britain, which is fitting since their fictional counterparts, Grimley, won it in Brassed Off, the 1995 film that brought the Barnsley band worldwide acclaim.

The colliery may be gone and the players not strictly local, but they still rehearse at Grimethorpe. Manifestly, Tara Fitzgerald’s feminine influence was also fictional – there are still no girls in it – though Andy Holmes is seductive on flugel. He and soprano cornet Kevin Crockford duetted silkily on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu and the second half saw features by the trio of trombonists and a breathtaking euphonium solo by Michael Dodd, who playfully shook out his bottom notes from his trouser leg. The percussionists, too, got to have some fun with Sondheim’s Comedy Tonight, but even though conductor Gary Cutt let the band storm through their encore of the William Tell Overture by themselves, it was his presence and flair that put the seal on this most famous brass brand.

Kate Lock