How much fun is it to learn a piece from scratch and to perform it 3 hours later? The 80-strong Wind, Brass and Percussion Festival Ensemble, combining tubas, trumpets, trombones, saxophones, horns, bassoons, clarinets, flutes, oboes, piccolos and recorders, generated a fabulous version of Waltz by Shostakovitch. They musicians loved the unusual partnerships such as saxophone and flute and the audience enjoyed the spectacle! A tour de force from Ms Corp!

The first of its kind at JAGS, the Festival gave every wind, brass and percussionist from Year 7 to 13 a chance to perform in pairs or groups. What diversity! From the novel percussion performance of ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ (instrument: the human body!) to the clarinets playing ‘Ave Verum Corpus’, the recorders ‘Pink Panther’ and the flautists ‘Shuffle by the Seaside’, to name only a bit of the programme, we didn’t stop admiring the different moods and genres.

The fairy-tale came in the second half, with Wonderbrass playing ‘Wild Swans’ by Elena Kats-Chernin, arranged by their conductor, Steve Thompson. It was truly magical listening to the rippling, contemplative Green Leaf Prelude, the thunderous dissonance of the Wicked Witch and the trembling Magic Spell Tango, and feeling the mystical notes of the Dark Forest surround us. The story of the mute princess who must weave and spin eleven coats with long sleeves to release her brothers was told through the music, narration and a series of vivid, projected images, beautifully created by local artist Leonie Cronin. Leonie has been working with the Wonderbrass group for a year and her story-telling sequence of paper cuts added to the texture and tone of this dark fairy tale with its ‘happily ever after’ ending.