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Re: The ISB

>For the five or so years that i've been interested in brass banding my
>favourite band has ALWAYS been the International Staff Band of the Salvation
>Army.  In my opinion there is nothing anywhere to even touch them.  However,
>thats just my opinion and i'm curious as to what other people think about them.

The ISB has been my favourite band as well for quite a few years now.
Although the comparison with the Enfield Citadel Band is interesting, I
think it is not really fair, because the ISB is able to select musicians
from a much larger geographical area than the ECB. This means they have
different material to work with.
Besides that, those two bands have completely different styles, Enfield
being the more aggressive (although I realize that 'aggressive' is not
exactly the right word) and the ISB being the more polished band.

The changing style in recent years of the ISB is IMO a result of the
changing of conductors: during the 30+ year period of Ray Bowes, the ISB
hardly changed the basics of their playing. In the (too) short period after
that, Robert Redhead slowly introduced some playful elements (those of you
who have seen him glowing at the climax of his piece 'Corpus Christi' while
conducting it, will know excactly what I mean). Steve Cobb is a great
bandtrainer and a real perfectionist and that's what we can hear when the
ISB plays under his leadership.
As a regular participant in the Salvation Army's Territorial School of
Music, I had the opportunity to play under the leadership of both Robert
Redhead and Steve Cobb. It was obvious that they are very different people,
which leads to different results on stage. It's just a matter of taste, IMHO :-)

The same applies of course to James Williams and the ECB, although the
recorded output of the ECB is fluctuating a lot in terms of quality lately.
Listen chronologically to The Enfield Collection, Toccata, Victors Acclaimed
and The Lord is King and you can hear the decay (and that's with a recording
engineer present :-o). Fortunately, their latest album, Milestone, is
actually very good! 

BTW I think the ISB sounds better on stage than on record. They visited
Holland about 2 years ago and performed stunningly! Also on the (live-)cd
'International Brass Spectacular' from Canada (with the Canadian, Chicago
and New York Staff Bands) I think they clearly were the better band.

I hope I haven't offended (nor bored!) anyone with my comments on the
subject ...

Greetings,

Edo Tichelaar (tichelaar@xxxxxxxxxxx)


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