Mum’s ticket #2 was a trip on Saturday to a Douglas Music Society concert featuring the Wingates Brass Band. Self-described as a “premiership” band, they lived up to their ranking. Performances were flawless, and the programme was a well thought out evening at the movies. Williams’ “Hymn to the Fallen” from Saving Private Ryan was sublime, although I had to spend the intro trying to stop myself from saying “matt damon” in my head in a “Team America” stylee, thus ruining it for myself.

The first half ended with an arrangement of “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King. It was billed as a ‘slightly unusual’ arrangement & I found myself disappointed with it at first – partly because, although the music was great, they didn’t have the solo voice cry which features at the start of the film, which I felt sure could have been done with one of the instruments there. However, the piece built, including some chanting from the musicians who dealt seamlessly with what could well have been considered a voyage out of their comfort zone, and by the end I felt myself being swept up into an overwhelming crescendo.

The pieces played covered a wide range of films over several decades, not too much John Williams, and a surprise inclusion of “Lara’s Theme” for the benefit of a departing band member – a change that was warmly received by the audience, many of whom were, one suspects, in their prime when the film was released. The two soloists were excellent, one of whom played her own arrangement of “Somewhere over the rainbow”, the other the classic “Orange Juice” concerto (again, as featured in Brassed Off).

On the whole, the concert made me nostalgic for the time when I played myself, and laboured under the tyranny of Mr Bridle’s baton at KEHS. My Dad, who played in the National Youth Brass Band in his time, said that he felt the standard of musicianship over the years has been raised a lot, and he doubts wherher the band of his time would have coped with some of the pieces we heard.

The band’s encore was “Death or Glory”, a classic band pioece which features in the opening sequence of Brassed Off, a film which did a lot for the band movement in the ’90s, and for Grimethorpe in particular.