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Re: Adjudicators

Hi all,

Firstly, I'd like to say that these my own opinions that I will be
discussing.

St Marys Brass host the Ern Keller contest on yearly basis and we as a
committee have had to deal with this issue repeatedly. As the sole sponsor
and organiser of the event I believe that we have the right to decide what
we want our contest to be about. Bands are invited to compete and all prize
money etc is provided by our most generous sponsor, The St Marys Band Club.

In answering your question, it is very difficult, we tried publishing our
expectations, to  competing bands as well as the adjudicator of course. The
added difficulty is the fact that it is called an Entertainment contest and
I am sure we are all aware of the debate this can cause. I personally don't
want to be entertained by funny hats and jumping clowns. I want to be
entertained by great playing. Of course this raises the whole issue about
the public perception again. We have over the years heard many interesting
comments by adjudicators, some of which seem all to distant from what we
are trying to achieve with the event.

I would say, choose your adjudicator carefully, if you find out enough
about the adjudicator you should be able to find out what he/she is about
and if it fits in with your contest go for it and hope for the best.
Fortunately for us, I think despite watching a band get on stage with bears
all over there instruments while playing the teddy bears picnic or
something, they still out played everybody on the day anyway so victory was
well deserved. I just wouldn't want to see such an event get further and
further away from music and turn into some flashing lights expo or
something.  (Bit like playing a CD of bird noises during a test piece eh?)

As a last resort we could probably screen the adjudicator so that he can't
see anything but we really don't want to do that.
I have always been interested what some of the MDs who compete or have
competed at Keller think about this issue, perhaps you'd like to say a few
words?

Steve Harlow
St Marys Brass







Richard Luckhurst <rickl@xxxxxxxxxx>
08/09/99 08:39

Please respond to brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To:   Brass Band <brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc:    (bcc: Steven Harlow/BCA/AU)
Subject:  Adjudicators




Hi Everyone

I would appreciate the list's thoughts on whether or not Adjudicators
should be given instructions by contest organisers.

Over the years the Narrabri (NSW Australia) has run a number of
contests and the standard of Adjudicators has varied from excellent
to terrible. We have had a fair bit of discussion, within our
Committee, about whether or not we have the right to give the
Adjudicator instructions. The results of the discussion seem to be
split 2 ways.

1) No we don't have the right to instruct the Adjudicator as this will
bias the results of the contest.

2) Yes we do as this will ensure a certain standard from year to year
and guarantee the Adjudicator has no preconceived ideas.

All of these thoughts come from a very bad experience the Band had at
the Australian National Championships, last year. The Band played
"From The New World" as its "Own Choice" in D Grade. We had received
very good comments from a number of Adjudicators prior to the contest
and were expecting a reasonable result. We were very surprised when
we received a very bad result. After listening to the Adjudicators
comments we found that he was expecting a performance very close
to the Orchestral version and he constantly made comments regarding
pieces missing from the Brass arrangement. Our MD spoke to the National
Band Council and we found that the Adjudicators receive no instructions
and are left to their own devices. We then spoke to a couple of other
Bands, who had the same Adjudicator, and they also found strange
comments on their Adjudicators tapes.

It seems to me that the most basic instruction an Adjudicator should
be given is to adjudicate only on the arrangement in front of him and
not preconceived ideas or other arrangements.

I would appreciate other thoughts on this.

Regards

Richard Luckhurst

BBb Bass. Narrabri Shire Band


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