C’est magnifique! Flowers are French Open Champions

Last Friday, the band set off from Gloucester in the early hours of the morning for Amboise in France. This was a welcome return to the French Open, a contest where we have had much success in the past, including at our last appearance in 2019.

We were blessed with beautiful weather and still waters for the ferry crossing from Portsmouth to Caen, and arrived in Amboise in the early evening in time to see the sunset and a handful of air balloons flying overhead. We took a couple of hours to explore the picturesque town centre and have dinner in the shadow of the castle, before heading to our hotel for some much needed rest.

We were up bright and early Saturday morning for a short rehearsal at the local music school, before heading to our first of three events: an indoor contest performance at the Beaumarchais Theatre. We opened our programme with ‘Into the Sky’ by Stephen Bulla, followed by our featured soloist Dan Thomas (principal euphonium) performing the 3rd movement of Vladimir Cosma’s euphonium concerto to rapturous applause. We closed our programme with the set test piece ‘Heroes’ by Bruce Broughton. We enjoyed preparing this exciting test piece, which was previously used for the 2021 National Finals.

The contest performance was live streamed and is now available to replay on YouTube (from 3 hours 27 minutes). Listen here.

After the indoor contest we were taken to a local restaurant for a well-earned lunch, before being whisked onto the next event: an outdoor march contest. This is a great spectacle as bands walk through the town centre flanked by crowds of enthusiastic brass fans, before playing their contest march for the adjudicators right in front of the Chateau d’Amboise.

We entertained the locals with a brief rehearsal in the car park before heading into town for the competition. Our MD Paul Holland chose Army of the Nile as our street march, and The Cossack for our contest march. Listen here.

Last, but certainly not least, we moved on to the venue for the evening’s Gala Concert, which closed the weekend’s proceedings. We chose a varied programme of entertaining music, including ‘The Incredibles’, an ABBA medley, three pieces from our 2021 BiC ‘Monopoly’ set, and the finale from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 4.

We featured four of our soloists in the concert: Paul Richards (soprano cornet) played Philip Sparke’s ‘Flowerdale’; Lauren Chinn (flugel) chose the Irish air ‘Magh Seola’; Matt Rowe (solo baritone) performed ‘Napoli’ arr. Geoffrey Brand; and Chris Thomas (solo trombone) selected ‘Bluebells of Scotland’ arr. Derek Broadbent. Each and every one of them was magnificent, and they received enthusiastic applause and much whooping from the audience.

The results were announced in the interval of the Gala Concert. We were absolutely delighted to be named overall champions, with an outstanding score of 119 out of 120 for the morning contest. We also took home the first prize in the march competition (with a score of 97 out of 100) and Dan Thomas received a splendid early birthday present in the solo prize.

The adrenaline carried us through the second half of the concert, including two encores: band favourites ‘Bright Lights Big City’ and ‘Toccata in D’. We then headed off to Le Shaker to celebrate into the night.

The band will be taking a few days off to recover before we get stuck into rehearsals on the British Open test piece: ‘The Lost Circle’ by Jan van der Roost. Tickets are on sale now for this iconic competition in Birmingham on 7th September.

French Open - 2024

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