Better late than never as the saying goes but after a busy time of carolling and enjoying the festivities here is a review of the VCB Christmas Concert that took place at the Verwood Hub on Saturday 15th December.

It was a delight to see a full Hub auditorium with all 300 seats sold and hopefully all 300 of the audience will have gone away full of festive spirits after performances by all the bands packed full of some of the best Christmas tunes.

The show kicked off with the Training Band under the baton of Mike Dunnings with some original arrangements; a ‘Christmas Carols March’ and ‘Three Kings Rock’ followed by the pop classics of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ and, of course, Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’. What a way to start!

As the stage was rearranged ready for Verwood Concert Brass Band’s first set, the audience was kept more than fully entertained by our new starters group ‘The Acorns’ led by Bill Ferrier (Trombonist in the main band). It was fantastic to see these new players enjoying performing in front of a very appreciative audience.

Verwood Concert Brass Band’s set under the baton of Kevin Smith included the now iconic ‘The Snowman’. This was followed by what has become a regular feature of the Christmas Concert which is to provide one of the up and coming young players in the organisation the opportunity to play a solo accompanied by the ‘Championship’ band.

This year the opportunity was given to Emma Close, trombonist in Verwood Town Band. Emma has also been participating in the prestigious National Children’s Brass Band of Great Britain and has also be granted a place at Wells Cathedral School, one of five specialist music schools in the UK for school age children. Emma played a superb version of ‘When A Child Is Born’. Well done Emma!

A few more youngsters were then involved in the next piece ‘Un Mambo Navideno’ which is a lively Latin style arrangement of the popular Christmas Carol ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ so the percussion team needed some extra helpers!

After the interval Verwood Town Band played their set which conductor Emma Button announced was unashamedly full of Christmas cheesiness which consisted of ‘It’s Beginning To Look (A lot) Like Christmas’, ‘A Winters Tale’, ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year’ and ‘Let It Snow’. However, it also included some audience participation with the inclusion of a sing-a-long to ‘Deck The Halls’.

Verwood Concert Brass Band then rounded off the concert with some further fabulous pieces and also so fun with Eb Bass player Duncan Smith performing a solo of ‘Frosty The Snowman’ dressed as a snowman! More fun ensued with ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ with the audience being ably assisted by a helpful elf (Aka Jack Musselwhite) and a Christmas pudding! (Aka Tom Ward).

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The audience also had some further participation in the singing of ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ with the special request to sing loud and heartily in tribute to VCB president Pam Reeks who had died in early November.

The band closed the show off with the wonderful Salvation Army piece ‘The Message Of Christmas’ but the enthusiastic audience demanded an encore so ultimately played out with, what else but, ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support during 2018 and we look forward to more great music making, concerts and contests in 2019.

Happy New Year to you all!

Click here for more photos of the Concert