Black Dyke Band, formerly John Foster & Son Black Dyke Mills Band, is one of the oldest and best-known
brass bands in the world. It originated as multiple community bands founded by
John Foster at his family's textile mill in
Queensbury, West Yorkshire
Queensbury is a large village in the metropolitan borough of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Perched on a high vantage point above Halifax, Clayton and Thornton and overlooking Bradford itself, Queensbury is one of the highest parishes in ...
in the mid-19th century. The ensemble has become prominent in competitive band championships and through recordings for film and television.
The band is well-known for recording the soundtrack to the
BBC gardening makeover series ''
Ground Force'' in 1997, and appeared in the
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...
edition of
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director.
Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over se ...
's sitcom ''
Dinnerladies'' in 1999. In 1999 they played on the
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
-nominated song "That'll Do" from ''
Babe: Pig in the City''. They have featured on recordings and live appearances by acts including
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
,
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
and
Tori Amos
Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full ...
. In 2014, the band won the
National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain for a record 23rd time, and the British Open Championship for another record 30th time. They have also won the European Championships a record thirteen times, most recently in 2015.
History
The band was formerly the band of the Black Dyke Mills in
Queensbury, West Yorkshire
Queensbury is a large village in the metropolitan borough of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Perched on a high vantage point above Halifax, Clayton and Thornton and overlooking Bradford itself, Queensbury is one of the highest parishes in ...
, England, a company owned by
John Foster. Foster, a
French horn
The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most ...
player, joined with others in a small brass and reed band in Queensbury in 1816. This band faltered, and another band formed – called the Queenshead Band – which consisted of 18 musicians around 1843. This second band also faltered, but in 1855, Foster and other musicians established the new mill band, and outfitted it with uniforms made from the mill's own cloth. Most of the musicians in the band also worked at the mill, and a close bond was fostered with the local community. The band has remained active since that time, and still rehearses in its original rooms.
Black Dyke was the first band to achieve the "Grand Slam" in 1985 by winning the Yorkshire regional, European, British Open and National Championship contests. They were also voted BBC Band of the Year.
They appeared in an episode of Victoria Wood's ''
dinnerladies'' sitcom in 1999.
European Championships
Recordings
Black Dyke Band has made over 350 recordings, including one of the first brass band recordings in 1904 and
classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" al ...
. It has recorded with classical
bass trombonist Douglas Yeo, and pop acts
Tori Amos
Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full ...
,
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and activist. He rose to fame as the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, he launched ...
and
The Beautiful South
The Beautiful South were an English pop rock group formed in 1988 by Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway, two former members of the Hull group The Housemartins, both of whom performed lead and backing vocals. Other members throughout the band's exi ...
. The band also worked with Gabriel on the highly acclaimed Millennium Show, featured in the
Millennium Dome
The Millennium Dome was the original name of the large dome-shaped building on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East London, England, which housed a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium. As of 2022, it is the ni ...
, as well as recording the music for the BBC programme ''
Ground Force''.
In September 1968, the band released a single on
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
’
Apple Records
Apple Records is a record label founded by the Beatles in 1968 as a division of Apple Corps Ltd. It was initially intended as a creative outlet for the Beatles, both as a group and individually, plus a selection of other artists including Ma ...
label. The A-side was an instrumental composed by
Lennon–McCartney
Lennon–McCartney was the songwriting partnership between English musicians John Lennon (1940–1980) and Paul McCartney (born 1942) of the Beatles. It is the best-known and most successful musical collaboration ever by records sold, with the ...
called "Thingumybob" (the theme to a
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television (LWT) (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 un ...
sitcom
A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...
of the same name starring
Stanley Holloway
Stanley Augustus Holloway (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English actor, comedian, singer and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage and screen, especially that of Alfred P. Doolittle in ''My F ...
). The flipside was a brass band instrumental version of another
Lennon–McCartney
Lennon–McCartney was the songwriting partnership between English musicians John Lennon (1940–1980) and Paul McCartney (born 1942) of the Beatles. It is the best-known and most successful musical collaboration ever by records sold, with the ...
song, "
Yellow Submarine". The single was released under the name John Foster & Son Ltd Black Dyke Mills Band, produced by McCartney, and was one of the first four singles issued on the Apple label. In 1979, the Black Dyke Mills Band worked again with McCartney on a track for the
Wings
A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is expre ...
album ''
Back to the Egg
''Back to the Egg'' is the seventh and final studio album by the British–American rock band Wings, released in June 1979 on Columbia Records in America (their first for the label), and on Parlophone in the UK. Co-produced by Chris Thomas, t ...
''.
In August 2009, the band undertook a tour of Australia with multi-instrumentalist
James Morrison which culminated in a concert at the
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...
.
Members
The principals of the band's current line up include:
* Soprano Cornet: Connor Lennon
* Principal Cornet: Richard Marshall
* Flugelhorn: Zoe Hancock
* Solo Horn: Siobhan Bates
* Solo Baritone: Katrina Marzella
* Solo Trombone: Brett Baker
* Bass Trombone: Adam Reed
* Solo Euphonium: Daniel Thomas
* Solo Eb Bass: Gavin Saynor
* Solo Bb Bass: Matthew Routley
The band's current Principal Conductor and Director of Music is the Welsh
euphonium
The euphonium is a medium-sized, 3 or 4-valve, often compensating, conical-bore, tenor-voiced brass instrument that derives its name from the Ancient Greek word ''euphōnos'', meaning "well-sounding" or "sweet-voiced" ( ''eu'' means "well" o ...
virtuoso Prof.
Nicholas Childs. His predecessor was trumpet player
James Watson
James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick a ...
.
Paul Lovatt-Cooper was the band's Composer in Association and former principal percussionist. He retired from playing in early 2011 in order to concentrate on his teaching, conducting and composition.
Black Dyke Band is the brass band in residence at the
Royal Northern College of Music
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is a conservatoire located in Manchester, England. It is one of four conservatoires associated with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. In addition to being a centre of music education ...
in Manchester, and Childs also conducts the RNCM Brass Band.
[ ]
Former members
*
John Maines, principal trombone
*
Maurice Murphy, principal cornet
*
James Shepherd, principal cornet
References
External links
Black Dyke BandGNER train named after band in December 2005
{{DEFAULTSORT:Black Dyke Band
British instrumental musical groups
Apple Records artists
Musical groups from West Yorkshire
Musical groups established in 1855
People from Queensbury, West Yorkshire
British brass bands