6 April 2003

A new CD (MMT2049) of mostly brand-new New Zealand works has been recorded by the National Youth Brass Band and released just prior to their ‘ANZAC’ tour to the United Kingdom in April 2003. The band comprises the country’s most talented young brass and percussion musicians selected annually from nationwide auditions, and on this recording they are heard in a programme of music which is both demanding and exciting.

Guest soloist on the tour and recording is the outstanding young trombonist and former member of the National Youth Brass Band, David Bremner, who performs the specially-commissioned Bremner Aria by the leading New Zealand composer Ross Harris.

Two works by Gareth Farr also feature on the recording, lending it a uniquely 'Pacific' flavour with the inclusion of log-drums in Waipiro and conch shells in the newly-commissioned Tawhirimatea (the name of the Maori god of the wind). The other New Zealand work in the line-up is particularly appropriate in light of the fact that the band has been invited to perform at ANZAC Day services in London’s Westminster Abbey as part of their tour; Dwayne Bloomfield’s Behold the Narrows from the Hill commemorates the events of the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War.

Also included is the ever-popular The Land of the Long White Cloud – Aotearoa by Philip Sparke, and George Hespe’s The Three Musketeers, performed as a tribute to the 1953 National Band of New Zealand who won the British Open Championship with their performance of this work, thus placing New Zealand brass band playing on the international stage.