The Band's Last Night of the Proms concerts at the exceptional Minack theatre continue to go from strength to strength with all 3 performance being sold out weeks before a note had been played.

The Cornish weather also held up and, despite leaving St Austell in fog, we arrived at Porthcurno to be met by glorious sunshine. In fact, but for a few ironic drops of rain in the performance of Manuel da Falla's Firedance the weather held off. In any event, the infamously resilient Minack audience were never going to be put off by a few drops of rain.

This year the band was conducted by professional conductor, Andy Duncan, who was as inspired by the beautiful cliff top theatre as were the band and audience. John Maines was on hand to compere and keep the crowd informed and amused. He was also quite rightly was cautious about adding some of the band member's jokes to his repertoire.

The band were again delighted to feature the talents of soprano soloist, Cheryl Brendish and this year the band was able to feature her in the first half in 2 arrangement's by Andy Duncan of The Water is Wide and You Raise Me Up. Such was the success of this that Andy is planning other arrangements which can feature the band and Cheryl again - watch this space!

After an action packed first half featuring such classics as Finale from William Tell, Festive Overture, a quite scary moment involving a bearded Andy Rice in a nun's habit and the virtuosic showmanship of Shaun Woodland in Czardas, the band featured the usual proms favourites of Fantasia on British Sea Songs, Jerusalem and Pomp & Circumstance No. 1 before finishing the concert with 1812 Overture complete with firework finish. The obligatory playing of Trelawny rounded off 3 very successful concerts to 3 very appreciative audiences.

Performing three Proms concerts in such close proximity is certainly hard work but the band relishes the challenge and each year has proven to be extremely rewarding and it is certainly one of the highlights of the year for all of the players.

The band is pleased to announce that it has again been booked up to perform the Last Night of the Proms concerts to close the Minack's programme of events in 2008 and further details can be obtained from the Minack website at www.minack.com in due course.

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