Exciting times for Pemberton

2011 has been an exciting year so far for the Pemberton organisation, starting with a win for the B Band in the third section at the Butlins Mineworkers contest in January. Just a few weeks later and the Senior Band won Preston Brass at the Guild Championship section in early February. By the end of February the Senior Band had also qualified for the National Finals, which will be held at the Royal Albert Hall in October.

Since then, we have been preparing for our busiest contest time of the year and have also recorded our first CD since Mark Bentham took the helm almost three years ago. At the end of March, we recorded a set of marches by one of the band’s former conductors, Mr William Rimmer. This CD will be released later this year, and what we have heard so far shows great promise.

Next Weekend we will compete at the Grand Shield, the qualifying contest for the British Open, the most premier brass band contest of them all. Last year we missed out on qualification by one place and hope to improve on that result this year on Hermann Pallhuber’s “Titan’s Progress”.

At the end of the month we will be competing at the All England International Masters in Kettering, playing a new piece commissioned for the contest by Darrol Barry.

In June we will compete at Whit Friday and a week later compete against the best bands in England at the English National Contest held in Preston, where we will be one of only ten bands invited, playing the set test “Elgar Variations” by Martin Ellerby and an own choice piece.

 

We are of course looking forward to this busy time, and hope to be as busy after summer, with a potential British Open place and our place at the National Finals to look forward to. However, financially, times are hard. We have become a victim of our own success and we can no longer rely on our sponsorship to fund this number of engagements. This is from our website:

Unfortunately with the economic climate and the cost of coach travel increasing substantially we are having some difficulty in funding the coach trip there and back and the cost of the coach is likely to be around the £2000 mark.

 

This is were we are after help from our families, friends and followers by inviting you to be part of our "Buy a Mile" fundraising effort.  There are 200 miles up for grabs and they are £5 each and soon as a mile is bought your name will appear on the "Buy a Mile" page on our website and the bus on our chart in the bandroom will move another inch closer to London.

For more details, please visit the band website www.pembertonoldwiganband.co.uk

May we take this opportunity to thank you for your generosity and your continued support for the Pemberton Bands.