Shepherd Group’s New Cornet Arrivals

Shepherd Group Brass Band are looking forward to the New Year with the arrival of vital new cornet players.

A few months ago, university commitments, relocation and retirements meant that the band was in a very unfortunate position to have lost a number of cornet players all at once. But following their successful third-placed performance in the Championship Section at the Bolsover Entertainment Contest back in October, they had a big recruitment drive and are now back up to full strength, with quite possibly, their strongest team yet.

Following a long hard search, the band have found a fantastic principal cornet player in Andy Novell.

A spokesperson for the band told A4B: ‘Andy has been a friend of the band now for many years and agreed to join the team following his departure from the York Railway Institute Band this autumn. Alongside being an excellent player Andy also brings conducting experience to the table from his time with the Otley Brass Band and we are looking forward to getting him involved with training some of our younger players. In total we have acquired 6 new cornet players, all of whom are great local players.’

Whilst the players have been performing with the band over the festive period, they will all be competing with the band at the Area in March on Land of the Long White Cloud and for the bands debut performance at the Spring Festival in May.

Musical Director, Richard Wilton, told A4B: ‘I’m so thrilled at how well it’s all come together. Back in August when we had players leaving to go to university and I found out we were losing a couple more due to new jobs, I won’t lie, I was really pretty panicked! But our new recruits take our cornet team to completely new levels and I can’t wait to start work on the Area test piece with them. I’m particularly delighted at the signing of Mr Novell, who has now done a couple of concerts with us and brings such classy playing to the cornet section, he really is a pleasure to work with. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Simon Dawson, who has been filling in for me on principal cornet. He has done a fantastic job and I honestly don’t know how we would have coped without him, really top bandsman!”