Review: Newport Music Club concert at Edgmond Village Hall with the wonderful Jackfield Brass Band
Originally intended to be held outdoors in the Edgmond Village Hall field, a stiff breeze and threat of rain showers meant transferring the performance to interior of the Village Hall. Any concerns over the volume of sound that a 30 piece brass band would create inside the hall were immediately dispelled when the band broke into its first number, the rousing march ‘The European’, a festive piece by Goff Richards composed for the 1981 European Brass Band Championship.
The Jackfield Brass Band itself dates from 1893 when it started life as a drum and fife band, becoming a full brass band in 1895 and a ‘championship band’ in the 2000’s. This championship quality was clearly evident to the large audience through the eclectic programme of popular music the band offered which ranged from transcriptions of Classical orchestral works such as Rimski-Korsakov’s ‘Capriccio Espagnol’; music provided for films (John Williams’s ‘Jurassic Park’ and Eric Coates’s march for ‘The Dam Busters’ being examples of this); to adaptations of ‘pop’ songs.
A number of pieces were chosen to showcase the band’s highly talented soloists. Cornetist Jack Hoof performed the lively ‘Song and Dance’ by Philip Sparke with great skill and musicality, while Pete Woodley played ‘Be My Love’ quite beautifully on the Euphonium. On Baritone, Kevin Short demonstrated the solo qualities of this instrument in a lovely rendition of SF9‘s pop song ‘My Story and Song’ and the 1964 pop song ‘Under the Broadwalk’ featured Matthew Johnson radiantly playing the Flugelhorn. To round the afternoon off and tug at the audience’s heart strings, the band movingly performed ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ as their encore.
Overall, Jackfield Brass Band provided a thoroughly entertaining afternoon, greatly added to by the eloquent, erudite and humorous introductions provided by the concert’s conductor, Simon Platford MBE.
By Alan Swale, Newport Music Club, 5 September 2025
