The auditorium at the New Plymouth Club was well filled for a concert by New Plymouth Brass on Sunday afternoon. The concert titled MUSE - Inspiring Youth, featured New Zealand Junior Cornet Champion Raynor Martin and vocalist Caitlin McKee.

Wintry conditions outside were quickly dispelled by the fantastic fanfare opening of Where Eagles Sing with a powerful percussion and a beautiful hymn-like middle section. 

Leigh Martin conducted with confident enthusiasm and his players revelled in their abundant skills as performers.

Hallmarks of the programme for me were the excellence of the arrangements and the balance between bold, brassy items and mellow, slower pieces.  Leigh Martin knows his players well and the arrangements he chose gave opportunities for excellent solos too numerous to mention.  Well-loved numbers such as Tico Tico and the Quincey Jones Soul Bossanova with their latin rhythmic drive, the jazzy Duke Ellington Caravan and Twelfth Street Rag - featuring two former conductors, Trevor Bremner and Bryce Gordon and guest soloist Raynor Martin - were played with joyful exhilaration.

The band's warm, well-tuned tone was a delight in slower numbers such as A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square, John Lennon's Imagine and A Little Prayer by Evelyn Glennie.  Equally appealing was Amanda Shewen's flugelhorn solo in What a Wonderful World.

A young man who knows where he's going in Raynor Martin, son of conductor Leigh and trombonist Morrine.  His assured delivery of the thousands of lightning-speed notes in Napoli and the musicianship displayed in Danse Napolitaine and Hines' Concertino point to a bright future as a cornetist.

New Plymouth can be proud of its brass band and young musicians and singers nurtured in our community.