It’s a wrap!
All of our bands have been working extra hard over the past few months to prepare entries for the Australian National Online Festival Of Bands 2021. The festival is replacing the National Band Championships this year because of the uncertainty and unpredictable state border closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the participating bands have prepared video/audio recordings of their performances and submitted them to the festival organisers for adjudication.
The performances will be streamed by BrassBanned over the Easter weekend (April 2-5).
Some of the performances with be streamed as audio only because we weren’t always able to get permission from the music publishers to prepare a video recording. We want to thank the composers, arrangers, and publishers who were generous enough to give us video synchronisation permission free of charge, including Brolga Music, David Stanhope, Etienne Crausaz. Other publishers like Hal Leonard/De Haske gave us permission to stream the videos during the festival, but the versions uploaded to YouTube after the festival will be audio only.
This year Wollongong has submitted entries for 4 bands, and a total of 14 individual pieces of music. Some of our junior members performed in all 4 bands, and have worked very hard to produce some great performances.
The 2021 festival will also mark the debut of the newest band Wollongong has to offer. “Illawarra Brass” was formed in January 2021 to record entries for the festival, bringing together past and present members of the Wollongong brass bands with a few guest performers into an incredibly talented ensemble. The local public were lucky enough to get a sneak peak at the Illawarra Brass debut concert on 7 March, but the rest of the world will have to wait until the BrassBanned live stream. The concert also featured the Wollongong Junior Brass band who played their festival program for the first time in public. It was a great success and a welcome return to live music performance, albeit with a relatively small and appropriately COVID-spaced audience.
We’re excited that all of our hard work will be presented to the world over Easter, and can’t wait to hear what the other bands around Australia have contributed to the festival!