Macleans Concert Band Programme Shows Strength in Depth
Posted on August 07, 2017
On Thursday 3rd August the Macleans Symphonic and Senior Concert Bands travelled to Whangarei to participate in the 2017 New Zealand National Concert Band Championships which took place at Forum North.
A fine performance from the Symphonic Band under the direction of Yih-hsin Huang impressed the adjudicators enough to be given a Silver Award - a fantastic achievement for the college’s training band who presented a programme of substantial repertoire together with some lighter touches.
The NZCBA Championship is attended by school bands, community bands, regional youth bands and tertiary bands with the competitive category of the competition only open to bands that have performed at the very highest level within the three years prior to the championship. Macleans Senior Concert Band qualified for this elite category on the back of previous successes.
The competitive criteria requires each band to perform a March, a Hymn or reflective item, a set test piece and an own choice work. Led by Mr Miles, the band showed great precision and dynamic control in their March, Army of the Nile and beautiful intonation and sound quality in their hymn choice, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms which featured Yuna Otani of Batten House (Flute) and Vivian Chen of Hillary House (Clarinet). The set work was Brian Bulmages’ Reverberations which featured a strong percussion section of Annika Xu (Hillary), Charles Lam (Mansfield), Cian John-Francke (Kupe), Wei Ting Teo (Rutherford) and Vanessa Zhu (Kupe). The highlight of the performance was Apollo: Myth and Legend which was full of youthful energy and dynamic excellence.
Also competing at the festival, Macleans newly established Saxophone Quartet of Jimmy Zhou (Batten) Yuna Otani (Batten) Alex Jin (Mansfield) and Miles Boermans (Te Kanawa) were presented with a Bronze award for their performance of Philip Normans’ A Short Suite and Yuna Otani (Batten), Flute and Mark Li (Mansfield) Trombone, were presented with Gold awards for their performances of Busser’s Prelude et Scherzo and Monti’s Czardas.
The band were presented with a Gold award for their performance and placed 2nd in the competition behind West City Concert Band and ahead of the University of Auckland Concert Band who were placed 3rd.