Stuff/Manawatu Standard Article about Feilding Brass

Feilding from Feilding

Feilding Brass to return to national stage
Paul Mitchell
10:46, Jun 05 2019

Feilding Brass musical director Carissa Davies, centre, will lead the band to its first national championship in six years.

Feilding Brass musical director Carissa Davies, centre, will lead the band to its first national championship in six years.

Feilding's brass band is trumpeting its return to the national stage after a six-year hiatus.

Feilding Brass will compete in the New Zealand Brass Band Championship in Hamilton in July.

Band president Stephen Lawton said it would be the first time many of its members would play on a national stage. The last championship the band attended was in New Plymouth in 2013, but this was the first year since then they had been able to raise the money required to attend the competition.

Lawton said everyone in the near 30-piece band had pitched in toward the $4000-$5000 needed to get to Hamilton. And while all the band members were fundraising or paying their own costs, the group was still seeking funding to help ease the burden.

Feilding Brass was the only Manawatū band able to make it to the championships this year and its members were ecstatic, Lawton said.

"But we've got a couple of band members from Palmerston North helping us out, and a couple more from Levin. Without them we wouldn't be going either. Us country bands have to look out for each other."

Carissa Davies took over as the band's musical director 18 months ago and this will be her first time leading the group on the national stage.

"We're really excited. It's an amazing chance to represent Manawatū and I think we'll do ourselves credit on the day," she said

The band is in the middle of an intense practice schedule, hoping to perfect the main test piece each band has to play.

Feilding Brass' grade will play Penlee, a piece about a 1981 lifeboat disaster that killed 16 people off the English coast, near Cornwall.

But Davies was keeping a lid on the other pieces the band has chosen to play.

Each piece is announced, but the band playing it is kept secret to keep things impartial. Bands had to be careful not to accidentally identify themselves, she said.

Stuff