Stan Lippeat - "what a marvelous test harmony Music is...!!"

[TheMusicMan]

tMP bumped into star flugel player Stan Lippeat earlier who had a few word sto say.

"There are lots of good bands here today, all of them having rightly deserved a place to compete here."

Stan had just listened to Wingates playing Harmony Music and commented... "I must say that though I very mch like the piece, I consider Harmony Music to be a technical nightmare for all bands and will undoubtedly take some playing. Some might disagree, but I feel It is arguably the hardest piece being played here today and it doesn't take much to spot the many traps to be found in the score, but I am hoping most bands will have spotted these!"

Stan is conducting Bo'ness and Carriden today who have drawn number 15 and is confident that they can manage the piece despite it being technically difficult.

"I am happy that rehearsals have gone OK; and lots of hard work accomonplished. We have a solid band who have worked very hard in bringing the piece up to the standard required to play it in the Senior Cup"

Asked if he had any thoughts on who might come away with silverware today Stan commented... "well, that's put me on the spot eh.. but I just listened to Ransomes band playing Witsun Wakes and I thought they sounded excellent. Who knows how the adjudicators will work out who deserves the prizes!!"

[Roger Thorne]

Stan had just listened to Wingates playing Harmony Music and commented... "I must say that though I very mch like the piece, I consider Harmony Music to be a technical nightmare for all bands and will undoubtedly take some playing. Some might disagree, but I feel It is arguably the hardest piece being played here today and it doesn't take much to spot the many traps to be found in the score, but I am hoping most bands will have spotted these!"

Couldn't agree more with that comment Stan and I must admit, having heard the first twelve bands, I was pleasantly surprised at the extremely high standard of playing. It was obvious that every band had worked their socks off to produce a 'performance' of Harmony Music and credit must be given not only to the players for overcoming the technical demands, but also the MD's who had again worked tirelessly to produce that little 'extra' to enhance their performance.

Of the bands I heard there were one or two absolutely cracking preformances of the piece which I thought would have finished somewhere in the frame, and having placed these 12 bands in some sort of pre-result order was rather surprised to find that it differed greatly to the final placings. I know this has been discussed many times before but I really think its time the adjudicators let the bands know what they are looking for before a performance. One thing that the adjudicators didn't seem to be concerned about yesterday were the 'splits' in the solo passages, tempo's, overblowing and tuning! So can anyone shed some light on what they were looking for? Some of the bands that performed yesterday must be pulling their hair out this morning wondering why they worked so hard to perfect balance, tempo's, intonation, dynamics, tuning etc, etc, only to be placed so low down in the final result table.