The Band's first engagement of the year (apart from our very important 'day job' at the normal sunday meetings and openairs of course) was on Saturday evening supporting the Staines songster brigade on their visit to Boscombe. This was a 'return visit' with Boscombe songsters having previously visited the Staines Corps. It was a great evening with excellent items by the brigade and by an impressive array of soloists. All who attended must have found something just for them personally.

The Band marched the songsters in with Goldcrest which appropriately set the theme of the evening - 'Life is a Song' - that being the chorus that James Anderson features in the trio of the march. In introducing the first band contribution the songster leader (Samantha Turner) informed the audience that (alongside Wham) Boscombe Band were "the sound of her childhood" - so we had plenty to live up to as we played James Curnow's arrangement of Procession of Nobles from Rimsky-Korsakov's opera 'Mlada'.

In the second part of the programme the band accompanied the Boscombe timbrellists in Let there be Praise and also played Ken Downie's marvellous arrangement of Myfanwy. This was followed by the haunting May it Be sung by some of the songsters and together these two items set a wonderful atmosphere for the scripture thought.