The following article was recently featured in the British Bandsman magazine.

There were scenes of joy and delight in New Zealand recently as NBS Nelson City Brass gave as its first live performance in several months.

The band performed outdoors to an enthusiastic audience on September 13, as part of efforts to celebrate its new sponsorship agreement with building society, NBS. Original plans to stage the concert in the local Annesbrook Church were abandoned amid fluctuating guidance on indoor audience numbers.

Instead a good sized audience, all appropriately social distanced, enjoyed New Zealand’s newest A Grade band play a selection of newer numbers including Phillip Harper’s arrangement of “Somewhere”, “Hallelujah” by Christopher Bond and Steve Sykes arrangement of “Queen Rules” along with older numbers such as the “Cornish Cavalier” march and the “Poet & Peasant Overture”.

Though normally reserved for indoor performance, the latter piece went down a treat outside and showed the extent of the band’s progress in recent years, with NBS Nelson City Brass having gained 3 national titles and a 2nd place since the appointment of Nigel Weeks, QSM, as musical director at the beginning of 2016.

Featured soloists were soprano cornet Kay MacKenzie in a classy rendition of “Bring Him Home”, Raffaele Bandoli’s jazzy improvisation of Neil Diamond’s “Love on the Rocks”, Saul Gibney and Andrew Yorkstone’s controlled and very lyrical performances of “One Day” & “Somewhere” respectively while Mike Ford gave a stunning rendition of the Mendelssohn “Violin Concerto” on Tenor Horn.

The encore of “I Will Follow Him” featuring the trombone section rounded off the concert and left the audience wanting more on a day which saw a major step forward for live music making for one of the rising stars of New Zealand banding. 

By British Bandsman