Deiniolen Silver Shines in North Wales

On the 10th of February the North Wales Solo and Duet Championships took place at the Galeri in Caernarfon.

It was a very successful day for the Deiniolen Silver Band once again who took the price for the band with the most overall points on the day. This is the third year in a row that the band has won this prize. Soloists and duets from the band were awarded nine first prizes out of the fifteen different categories and had someone in the top three in every competition except for two. Their young Euphonium player Glyn Porter won both the Slow Melody and Air Varied in his age category with Ela Haf Williams the senior band assistant principal cornet player also doing the double in her age category.

The band had winning duet performances from Deio Llyr and Tomos Efans in the under 18 category. With Arwel Williams and Urien Sion Huws winning the open duet with their performance of Angus Dei on Tenor Horn and Baritone.

They band also had two winning quartets in the Under 14 and 18 category. And the Wilkinson Sword Trophy was awarded to Urien Sion Huws for winning the slow melody in the open section.

A special mention must also go out to their Bass Section who competed in the Open Quartet, who hadn’t competed at this competition for a number of years. Named the ‘Deiniolen Pensioners’ they gave an excellent performance and were awarded second prize in this category.

Two special awards were given out on the day in memory of two former players of the band. The Iwan Williams Memorial Trophy for the most promising player in Sections 1 and 2 was won by Catrin Mai from the youth band.

The Eilir Williams memorial trophy for the most promising player in Sections 3 and 4 outside of the prizes was won by Iwan Griffith from the senior band.

The band’s accompanist for the day was their own MD, Lois Eifion who was very proud of the players for their performances throughout the day. She said:

she told A4B: “I was very proud of all of the members of the Deiniolen Band at competition, everybody did so well and that showed in the results given on the day. We have a lot of young members who are such good soloists and we’re very glad to have them as members of the Senior band.”

The band would like to thank Lois for her hard work leading up to the competition and for accompanying over forty different performances throughout the day. The senior band are now working hard for the Welsh Regional Championships which takes place in Swansea in a few weeks’ time.