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Brass Bands in the US

To: brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Brass Bands in the US
From: TAYLOR_ROY@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: 11 Sep 96 08:39:00 -0700
Priority: low
Reply-to: brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Some of you may recall me asking the list recently if anyone knew of a
brass band near San Francisco because I was visiting Silicon Valley for
a few weeks and wanted to get in some practice.  Well, for those who are
interested, I located and visited a quite good british style brass band
in Watsonville, California, about 2 hours drive south from San Francisco
and 1 hour from San Jose.

They have the same instrumentation and seating arrangements (which I had
been wondering about) althought they used two rows for their four tenor
horns which I've never seen done before.  Many of their members travel
for 1-2 hours to rehearsal because its one of only 2 brass bands in
California, so I'm told (apart from some Salvation Army bands of
course).

I took up the challenge and drove for an hour on the wrong side of the
road (for me) to attend their rehearsal and was very pleasantly
surprised.  I would rate them as a good B grade band by Australian/NZ
standards but it was only their second rehearsal after the summer break
so they were a little rusty. The major difference I noticed was probably
that the cornets were a little "brighter" than I'm used to and they
didn't produce that rich mellow cornet sound that (most) good brass
bands do.  I was kindly lent an american 3 valve baritone euphonium (or
whatever its called) which was quite a bit smaller than the Besson
Soveriegn I'm used to but still produced a nice sound.

I thought that Watsonville, with a british style brass band, might be a
quaint english style village but its more like a mexican border town, a
little econimically depressed but boy, do they serve great mexican food
and cheap.

Thats the end of my story.  I'm flying back to Australia on Friday the
13th, so hopefully the plane will not be crowded.

Cheers,
Roy Taylor,
City of Dandenong Band,
Melbourne, AUSTRALIA.		(taylor_roy@xxxxxxxxxx)


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