Announcements

As chairman, I have great pleasure in announcing a number of new appointments within the band.  Russ Young has been working with the band this summer & already has made a huge impact .

With a Championship northern band history , a former Royal Marines principal cornet player and now currently a Bandmaster in the Royal Marines, the band couldn’t be happier to announce the appointment of Russ Young as our Musical Director.   Russ introduced the Band to Ross Hunt & as they say the rest is history. Ross prepared the band & conducted us at our recent successful summer concerts in St Pauls & Selsey.  Ross is also a bandmaster with the Royal Marines & although he is a clarinettist, we haven’t held this against him & are equally delighted to announce his appointment as our Bandmaster.

Due in no small part to our new conductors & recent contesting success, I am  also pleased to welcome– Father & Son , Howard & Thomas Ireland on 2nd & solo trombone respectively. Thomas  started his first concert in great style with us, with the beautiful solo ‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over You’– arranged by Bill Geldard.

Derek Jones has joined on Solo horn. Derek is also a composer & writer; in fact the band is currently working on one of his pieces – ‘At The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners’, which we hope to record later in the year.

We have also welcomed Shaun Street & Chris Taylor to strengthen our solo cornet team.

The band have concluded their summer season with a busy schedule of engagements  including two fantastic concerts, which featured our new players, lots of new music & a trip down memory lane, when John Williams our Life Vice President & a former MD, conducted the band for their signature tune ‘Sussex by The Sea’.

                                                     Geoff Penfold

SCABA Entertainments Contest, Crawley 0n 16th May 2010
Section A

Chris Davis OBE, agreed to take the band to the contest at short notice. Chris performed nothing short of a miracle, by putting together a fantastic programme in just 5 weeks with the band. We worked hard & the band felt confident when we took the stage. Our programme consisted of Gaudete, The Boy from Menaem, Cute, Mid all the Traffic & we finished with Signature. Our principal solo cornet  Iona again did us proud, with Chris’s own arrangement of “Through the Eyes of Love”, which the adjudicator really appreciated. We were awarded 3rd place, a proud moment for the band, particularly as we beat some championship bands along the way. The band would like to extend its grateful thanks to Chris for all his hard work.

Julie Penfold

Looking back and looking forward  2009 to 2010

Chichester City band brought the curtain down on a very successful year with our Christmas concert on 13/12/09. Entitled ‘Strictly Christmas!’, the concert featured a range of seasonal repertoire from around the world including Caribbean Christmas and a new work entitled Santa’s Little Helpers, where the trombone section came to the fore.

The band was lead by Iona Harrison our principal cornet. Iona, who won the soloist prize at the Southern Counties Entertainment Contest earlier in the year, capped a first year as our principal in style with some fine solo work.

I have great pleasure in welcoming our new bandmaster, Ashley Williams, to the Chichester City Band. He like our Director of music Martin Grace is a bandmaster in The Royal Marines and is a very accomplished musician and conductor and we are very fortunate to have them both.

Although Ashley is a first study violinist and also plays clarinet, we do not hold this against him, as he has to deal with his own brass section in the Collingwood band on a daily basis, and has much experience to draw from.

Ashley has already led the band for several jobs, and most recently helped us to entertain the inhabitants and tourists in East Wittering at a recent D-Day celebration. The band is gradually warming to Ashley’s unique sense of humour, which we all enjoy and he has settled in nicely.

I hope he feels welcome and appreciated by the band members because he is. Here’s to a long and successful relationship with Ashley and his wonderful family whom we met at East Wittering. Steve Barron, Chairman - July2009

City Band’s Salute to Heroes – Wear Your Medals With Pride!

Chichester City Band will be doing its bit for Armed Forces Day with a Chichester Festivities concert featuring the very best of music with a military and wartime theme.

Musical Director Martin Grace along with bandmaster Ashley Williams are both servicing members of Her Majesty’s Royal Marine Band Service and will be taking the band through such classics as We’ll Meet Again, Lily Marlene, the Dam Busters, 633 Squadron and The Great Escape.

To reinforce the link with Armed Forces Day, admission will be free for any serving and former armed services personnel who come along with a paying ticket holder. We would also be delighted if anyone past or present from the Armed Forces wore their medals and campaign ribbons to the concert.

The Chichester Branch of the Royal British Legion will be supplying standard bearers and there will be a retiring collection for the Legion at the end of the concert.

Great success for band’s new principal cornet player

Good result for Band at London and Southern Counties Regional Championships.

On Saturday 12th March 2009, the band entered the regional championship 2nd section and we attained our best result in years. We were awarded 5th place out of any entry of 17 bands. This leaves us in joint 3rd place overall, making promotion next year a real possibility.

The adjudicator said the performance was pretty sound, the band playing with character and with solos from cornet (Iona Harrison) and Euphonium (Geoff Penfold) Impressing.

The result was particularly satisfying as we have had quite a few changes in personnel. The day was a day of firsts - the first time Alex Barron has played Flugel (having recently changed from Baritone), Pete Mac changing to Soprano and Steve Grant playing Solo Baritone for the band for the first time. Iona lead the band successfully as principal solo cornet for the first time and the adjudicator was full of praise for all her solo work. Our MD Martin, entered his first ever band contest - a whole new experience for him. He showed how much he has improved the band already in the short time he has been with us and we look forward to our next contest in The Hawth in May with renewed confidence.

Since being elected Chairman at the Band's AGM on 31st January this year, I thought all I had to do was have the odd glass of red wine with the Mayor during a concert interval. I have now been asked to write this article for the Band's Newsletter, what next?

First of all I would like to get you all up to speed with who we have and have not:

We said farewell to husband and wife duo - George and Sarah Arnold (Principal Cornet and 1st Baritone) who left to join the newly formed Spinnaker Brass in Portsmouth. We also said goodbye to John Kidby (Co-Principal Cornet) who was attracted to the Championship Section Band in Bournemouth and goodbye to Jane Bourne (2nd Horn) and Rob Hewson (Percussion) who are soon to marry and need more time to be a family with their son Oliver. A big thank you for all their past efforts and support and good wishes for their futures.

Next I need to welcome Julie Penfold (1st Horn) wife of Geoff (Principal Euphonium and Band Secretary). Lucy Bicknall (Cornet) and Natalie Talbot (Percussion) join us, in addition to playing with Chichester Youth Brass Band. Eric on Trombone all the way from the USA and Catherine Jarman (Baritone) ex-CYBB. Later this year will see Emma Button (Principal Trombone) leave to study at the Royal College of Music in London and Elizabeth Arnold (Cornet) leave to study Primary School Teaching at Canterbury University. Sally Nelson (1st Horn) will take a break around 4th August when baby Nelson is due and congratulations on the recent engagement of Ruth Hartley (2nd Euphonium) to Dan. Other movements include welcoming Alf Hughes back to Principal Cornet from Solo Horn. Now who said Brass Bands were boring and nothing ever happens? Phew!

I better mention some musical events next! Regretfully we had to withdraw from taking part in the Hove Entertainments Contest on 6th April due to MD John Williams having a pacemaker fitted. He still managed to attend in his role of Chairman of SCABA who organised the contest.

We did complete in the recent Crawley Entertainments Contest on 18th May and were awarded Best Unplaced 1st Section Band which put us 4th out of 8 bands overall - a great result. Our programme included Fanfare and Flourishes, Scherzo For Baritone - a great performance by my son Alex. This was followed by a new piece called El Es El Senor (very Spanish..) then a great performance of the Lord Is Gracious featuring Principal Cornet Alf Hughes. Our Finale was ZULU - all this in the 24 minutes allowed, wow! Another fantastic result at this contest was when Cornet player Elizabeth Arnold received the best soloist prize in the 3rd Section and Youth Band section earlier in the day with CYBB under the baton of Kevin Webb (Ex Principal Trombone CCB).

Finally we have our annual concert as part of the Chichester Festivities coming up very soon (Friday 27th June) and we hope to see as many of you there as possible. (Steve Barron - Eb Bass and Chairman).

Chichester City by the Sea

The band returned to rehearsals in early January after a busy Christmas round of concerts, carols and all things seasonal. Our first engagement of 2008 was a concert held in West Wittering Village Hall, in aid of funds to build a school in Sierra Leone. A packed house ensured the concert's success and the band was subsequently booked to hold a similar concert at East Wittering Church Hall in November.

We finally found time in our busy schedule to record a CD. In January, with Graeme Lewis as our producer, we recorded a selection of our most requested pieces. The CD entitled "Sussex By The Sea played by Chichester City Band" will be available to purchase shortly.

This spring saw the bands contesting first at Shanklin Band's Entertainment Contest on the Isle of Wight. A truly memorable weekend for the band, winning:

At the "Areas" in Stevenage on 16th March, we were placed 8/14 ensuring our continued 2nd Section status.

Already this year we have continued to build, with 8 new players joining us. They, along with the band, enjoyed the master class with David Hirst on Sunday 27th April. David took us through music for the forthcoming Entertainments Contest, as well as contest pieces for the future. The band continues to benefit greatly from both our personal and professional relationship with David. Carole Crompton also provided a unique learning opportunity for our Baritone soloist, Alex Barron, to prepare the piece "Scherzo for Baritone" which was specially written for her. Alex performed this piece at the May Entertainments Contest in Crawley.

We have also recorded Abide With Me renamed Abide Pompey to celebrate Portsmouth FC reaching the FA Cup final. New words by John Semour were sung by The Solent Male Voice Choir with Music Director Adam Hatton accompanied by CCB and featuring a fanfare in the last verse written by Alf Hughes. This recording is availalbe to download from iTunes, Napster and HMV etc with all proceeds to local charities:- Tom Prince Cancer Trust, Oakley Waterman Foundation and Second Chance. (John Williams MD)