We welcome Sarah Moore to the band, joining on the cornet section. Sarah has joined us from the Hathern band and previously from North Wales, where she played for the Seindorf Beaumaris band.

On Friday 29th May, the band travelled up to Saddleworth for the annual Whit Friday marches.

Due to the event normally being in school term time, we have not attended for over 5 years, so we were all excited to attend.

Due to the event being well attended this year, we just missed out on completing a minimum of 6 village contests to be placed in the full Saddleworth results.

However we had a great evening and competed at Scouthead, Diggle, Delph, Dobcross and Uppermill villages. Thanks to Darren Stonehouse who volunteered to be the 'booking in' runner for the evening.

Following the recent confirmation that the band will be promoted to the Championship Section in January 2016, musical director Graham Jacklin, decided that to help prepare the band for the challenges of test pieces in the top flight section, the Edward Gregson 2012 composition 'Of Distant Memories' was chosen for this years attendance at the Weston Super Mare Contest.

The players and musical director both relished the opportunity to perform such a technically and musical challenging piece and pulled of a commendable performance.

Unfortunately the performance did not impress the adjudicators, Steve Sykes and Paul Holland, placing us 5th out of 6 bands in the combined Championship/First Section.

However, as our primary goal was to challenge ourselves to prepare and perform one of the recent specially written Championship Section pieces, we more than exceeded our expectations in providing a confident and musical performance.[more]

Several members of the Training and Senior band competed at the recent Groby Spring Slow Melody Festival, held at Groby College on Sunday 26th April.

The prize winners included:

Junior Slow Melody 10 years & under
Edd Culpin - First Place
Emily Capstack - Third Place

Junior Air Varie 14 years & under
Hannah Matthews - Third Place

Open Air Varie
Steve Barham - Third Place

Open Duet
Steve and Liz Barham - Second Place.

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