Quite aside from its movie-ready story (which in fact was the basis for the film Brassed Off), the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, until recently the house band of a coal mine, has continued to develop its talents in collaboration with a variety of contemporary composers. One is Nigel Clarke, with which the group has worked on an ongoing basis, but not all the music here was composed for the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Two works were written for the Brass Band Buizingen in Belgium, and one for perhaps the Grimethorpe's primary ...
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Quite aside from its movie-ready story (which in fact was the basis for the film Brassed Off), the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, until recently the house band of a coal mine, has continued to develop its talents in collaboration with a variety of contemporary composers. One is Nigel Clarke, with which the group has worked on an ongoing basis, but not all the music here was composed for the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Two works were written for the Brass Band Buizingen in Belgium, and one for perhaps the Grimethorpe's primary rival in Britain, the Black Dyke Mills Band. All of this information points toward the role the group has played in nurturing a body of virtuoso band music in Britain, and virtuoso is the key word here. All four of the works call for extremely athletic playing, not only for one or two players but across the ensemble, which generally moves in rapid multipart polyphony. The pieces are all programmatic and call for a variety of extended-technique effects, such as the windstorm sounds in...
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