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Introductions and Reflections

Greetings, Brass-bandophiles!

First of all, the introduction.  My name is Dan Gordon, and I play Eb 
Bass with the Kensington & Norwood City Band in Adelaide, South 
Australia.  Whilst these days I earn a living as a jazz double bass 
player, I still play with the band (brass bands are a bit like herpes - 
hard to shake).

I've been tossing these thoughts around in my mind for some time - 
perhaps some of you folk have an opinion:

I've been exposed to most sides of music, and played with all manner of 
different ensembles:  brass bands, jazz bands, orchestras, big bands, 
chamber ensembles, rock bands, country bands, you name it, I've done it 
at some time or other.  Each genre tends to have attached to it its own 
particular outlook, its own perception of music as a whole.  The brass 
band, though, seems to be something particularly unique, and I don't mean 
that in a completely positive way.

First, the good points:  brass bands tend to be made up almost entirely 
of people who want to be there, who enjoy getting together and making 
music and who do so for little return other than personal satisfaction 
and a sense of belonging.  From this motivation springs a refreshingly 
honest and unpretentious form of music making.  There tends to be none of 
the professional-type corruption which tends to work its way into even 
the most amateur of orchestras.  The sound, too is uniquely beautiful, at 
least to those of us who were enraptured early!

But there are some things that bother me about the brass band movement as 
a whole.  There are a few things which seem to be endemic to 
brass-banding which are anti-musical.  That is to say, they actively 
discourage the making of music in a meaningful way.  The first of these 
is competition.  Now competition is unmusical full-stop, the awarding of 
marks to a musical performance is a contradiction in itself, and does the 
beauty of the music a great injustice, but the particular way that the 
brass band world has of treating competitions seems to make the situation 
worse.  There seems to be an endless comparing of marks, as though they 
are any indication of the actual merit of the performance, the musicality 
of the performance, the capacity of the performance to move its audience, 
to invigorate them, excite them, sadden them, give them a greater sense 
of being human.  How can we quantify these qualities with a few marks, 
but even having done so because of the practicalities of competition, how 
can we credit these marks with anything other than the most arbitary 
importance?

This brings me to my second point:  The fact that brass bands seem to 
have no other means apart from competition by which to assess their 
standard, and no other forums apart from competition in which to play the 
serious, exciting music which I believe shows a brass band at its 
magnificent best.  How many people outside of the brass band "movement" 
are even aware of the existence of music like Bourgeois' "Blitz", 
Gregson's "Dances and Arias", Sparke's "Aoteoroa" (insert your favourite 
test piece here)?  Almost everyone I have spoken to in the greater 
musical world sees a brass band as a vehicle for playing hymns and 
marches, maybe the occasional watery pop arrangement in the park on a 
sunday afternoon.  And, to be honest, there aren't many bands working 
very hard to dispel this image.  There are very few brass bands willing 
to stand up and be counted in the world of music as genuine ensembles, 
deserving of as much credibility as a chamber orchestra or a string 
quartet.  They seem to prefer the cosy confines of the brass band 
movement, where the only thing they have to worry about are the points on 
the adjudicator's sheet.

A fairly lengthy post by the standards of this list, but I would be 
interested to hear any responses.

Cheers.
Dan Gordon
Adelaide, South Australia.

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