Manx Music Festival 2010

Ramsey Town Band enjoyed a string of top class results at the brass classes of the Manx Music Festival. On Saturday, in the solo competitions, the day started with 9 year old Ramsey cornet player Jason Turner winning the year 6 brass solo class with 92 marks playing "Ragamuffin" followed by a win and a third place for two " Neptune Street Nippers" ensembles in year 10 brass ensemble class playing a Manx folk song arrangement called "The Heather and the Gorse" and "Miniature Symphony". The next class saw cornetist Illiam Quane winning the year 7 to 10 brass solo playing Napoli closely followed by his sister Ellen in 2nd place on tenor horn playing "Higgy-jig" 3rd place went to Ramsey's Katie Revill playing "Misty". Florence Wood, Lucy McLeod and Alfie Leach took three of the next four places.

After lunch there was further success for Ramsey as Meghan Quane took first place in the year 11 to 13 brass solo on cornet playing Zelda, and then the Jennifer Cook trained Ramsey Town Band quartet won the open quartet class playing Gilbert Vinter's fiendish quartet "Fancies Knell"

The day was rounded of by a second place in the open solo to musical Director Robert Quane playing "The Nightingale" on cornet.

Sucess continued on Sunday where Ramsey's quartet "Alfie's longest parsnip" won the up to year 10 Brass Quartet class with 94 marks playing "Down by the Riverside" followed by two further Ramsey quartets "french fries" and "A Duck, Clapper, Flea Jop" in third and Fourth places.

On Sunday evening, Ramsey were a creditable second place in the Brass Band test piece class playing Gareth Wood's interpretation of the Maori legend "Hinemoa" and then to crown a memorable weekend, hard working adjudicator Steven Pritchard-Jones placed Ramsey first in the 20 minute programme class and awarded the George Ridgeway trophy for best soloist to Illiam Quane who wowed the audience with Kenny Baker's "Virtuosity" Ramsey's varied programme also featured the music of Edward Gregson in "Music for Greenwich", the gospel rock of "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free" and finished in latin american style with "Zambezi"

In addition Ramsey were proud to see the Neptune Street Nippers on stage in the brass band classes for the first time playing a creditable March and Hymn "Slaidburn" and "Rockingham" and a full programme featuring a cornet trio of Katie Revill, Florence Wood and Jason Turner celebrating the Ramsey skipper bus "The Number 12".

"Our success is a team effort and lots of credit should go to Jennifer Cook and Paul Hamilton our Music Services peripatetic teachers and to Ray Gillis and John Garfield who train our beginners on a Saturday morning." said a delighted Musical Director Robert Quane.