NTC Contest 2015
October 27, 2015 in Recent Highlights by RDTC
25th October
Sunday was competition day – the first competition for the band this year. The Nautical Training Corps Contest 2015 was held at The Triangle Leisure Centre in Burgess Hill, West Sussex and aside from the NTC classes, they had offered an Open class which the band entered into.
We had been practicing for the month leading up to the contest and put in two extra weekend rehearsals to make use of what daylight was left of the season and the excitement of the band grew for our first competition of 2015.
The contest involved a 12 minute arena performance and the band entered to the march; Glorious Victory – more on the victory later 🙂  The band formed into 3 ranks of 16 as Drum Major, George Foreman saluted to start our performance. The routine started with the march; Imperial Echoes which entailed a series of quick and slow marching as well as an array of visual manoeuvres. Moving on to something more contemporary, the band then formed a circle to play Uptown Funk (the 2015 hit by Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars). Lastly, but by no means least – in fact, most in some ways – the band played Zorba which starts at around 45 beats per minute (bpm) and gradually increases up to around 190 bpm. It starts as a slow march, one pace at a time, and by the end resembles something just short of a jog – this was made famous by our friends at The Band of The Brigade of Gurkhas
For the results – we did rather well! We won a collection of 8 awards including:
- Best Overall Band (Open Class)
- Best Turnout
- Best Musical Performance
- Best Visual Performance
A thoroughly enjoyable day on all counts and the band did an excellent job, with additional thanks to our Band Director Paul Binder, and the rest of the tutors, and supporting staff.