Bands show that where there's brass there's young talent hitting a top note

THERE are 25 brass players on stage at the Harrogate International Centre, but my eyes are glued to one of the four percussionists standing at the back. He is holding up what looks like a large pair of wooden tongs, which make a snap like a whip when he brings them smartly together.

This he does precisely and with aplomb, switching smoothly between the slapsticks (as they're called), sleigh bells and a virtuoso display of Japanese-style drumming, raising his sticks above his head and clicking them together in a complicated rhythm in time with his fellow percussionists.

What captivates me is not just the fact that he has an obvious flair for percussion. It's that he looks so young and is so small that he can only just be seen above his drums.

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This is not a youth band. It is the renowned Delph Brass Band, and they are competing in the National Brass Band Championships of Great

Britain. What's even more surprising is that this young lad isn't in a minority.

As band after band troops on to play the test pieces, it becomes obvious that young people make up a substantial proportion of the players – at least half, in many cases, and sometimes more. In the melee outside the hall there are primary school-age children carrying cornets and wearing uniform jackets too large for them, while hordes of teenagers in hoodies customised with their band's name, shriek and giggle and do what normal teenagers do.

It is Sunday, the second day of the finals for bands in sections

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1 to 4. Today, it's the turn of the lower bands in sections 3 and 4. Brass bands are ranked in a similar way to football clubs, with the top bands – brass heavyweights such as Black Dyke and Grimethorpe – in the Championship section, which has its own final at the Royal Albert Hall, on October 9.

I am here to support the York Railway Institute Band, sister band to my own (York RI

Golden Rail Band, not competing today), which has qualified for Section 3 finals after achieving second place in the North of England Regional Championships in Darlington earlier this year.

I'm also here because I'm passionate about brass bands and about saving them, and I want to find out whether the predictions for their future

are really as dire as some say.

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Thirty years ago, there were 35,000 registered brass bands in the country. Today, the number is around 700.

The gloomy statistics were revealed by Sue Perkins in the BBC documentary series, A Band for Britain. She went on to lobby government Ministers for more funding on behalf of brass bands.

Money is only part of the picture. Getting young people interested in brass music in the first place is seen as the biggest challenge. Academics from the Institute of Education at the University of London caused a stir back in July when they published research claiming that brass bands could die out because brass music is heard so infrequently on radio, television and the internet.

Certainly, some brass bands are suffering. The predicament of Dinnington, the ailing band whose fortunes Perkins helped to revitalise before she left the brass world to bake cakes, was recognisable to all of us in the brass-band world. In my own band, the average age is 49

and we have only three

young players.

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York Railway Institute Band, with whom I'm travelling, has 12 youngsters, ranging from 13 to 20. They're damned good, all of them. They should be –they've been practising for the contest under conductor Gordon Eddison since May, and the same professionalism and commitment is expected of all players, regardless of age.

On the day, the fourth section bands play first. The winners are Hazel Grove, from Stockport, whose boisterous youths roar their success to the rafters.

The second-placed band, Besses Boys, also from the North-West, is likewise full of young, gifted and high-spirited players. Dinnington, along with the other Yorkshire qualifier, Worsbrough, is not placed.

Then it's on to Section 3,

which has the fiendishly difficult Willow Pattern as the test piece. My lot have been drawn fifth; a good draw (there are 17 in the section). I'm so nervous on their behalf that, when they start playing, I almost bite through the end of the pencil I'm chewing.

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They perform brilliantly overall, though there are a few fluffed notes (aka "tuning issues") due to nerves.

Delph have set the bar high and the consensus is that they were better technically, but that York have the edge on musical interpretation. However, it's the adjudicators' opinion that counts. They sit in a screened-off box in the centre of the auditorium and, while their judgment is often vociferously disputed – I was blocked into the ladies' loo by an outraged woman whose opinion of the Section 4 results is unprintable – it is final.

We go off for a meal and a drink and I take the chance to talk to some young players.

It becomes clear that they all

are proud of what they do, besides enjoying the social side of "banding" .

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"I love the family it brings," says Tom Byrne, 16, a trombonist with York RI. He likes wearing the uniform, too. "I like the feeling of belonging to something special and our music bringing pleasure

to people."

Sam Lovatt, RI's principal cornet, is 18 and has been playing for nine years. He's

been told he's good enough to go right to the top, "if I practise enough", and has never allowed peer pressure to stand in his way. "There were a few that made comments, but I wasn't bothered."

Mostly, it seems, other young people are proud of their band-playing mates and even come to support them at concerts.

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Baritone player Tom Hoyle, 17, of Holmfirth, says: "My friends think it's cool that I play."

He's been playing since he was eight and can't imagine life without brass bands.

"If I gave it up, I wouldn't

do owt."

Later, in a takeaway, I bump into a crowd of blue-jacketed teenagers from Welsh band Goodwick. Over hungrily devoured chips I talk to 17-year-old Ffion Williams, a flugel player, and she tells me the average age of the band is an astonishing 21.

"Banding is just something I do," she says, echoing Tom. "Other people ride horses or dance or go to air cadets. This is what I do."

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We return to the hall for the results. Mexican waves are rippling through the auditorium. Despite the late hour – it's gone 11pm – excitement levels are off

the scale.

Honour is satisfied for York Railway Institute Band, which is placed a commendable fifth, beating all the other Yorkshire and North of England bands. Goodwick, the talented young Pembrokeshire band, comes second, and Ffion wins best instrumentalist.

And Delph? They win first prize and a huge trophy. I didn't spot that young percussionist again, but I think we can safely assume that he, like so many of the other young players at Harrogate,

will be inspired to carry on by the experience.

I don't think we need sound

the death knell for brass bands just yet.

n Kate Lock is an author, trombonist and Festival Director of Brassed On! York 2010.

n Watch the Grimethorpe Colliery Band play Jerusalem, England's Commonwealth Games anthem, at yorkshirepost.co.uk/video