Black Dyke Band

The Black Dyke Band is among the world’s premiere brass bands, as well as one of the oldest. In addition to consistent competition victories in Britain and beyond, the band has collaborated with prominent classical and pop artists, including Paul McCartney.
The John Foster & Son Black Dyke Mills Band dates ultimately to 1816 when a brass-and-wind band was formed by employees at the Black Dyke Mills of Queensbury, West Yorkshire, England. That group disbanded after some years of operation, as did a successor, the Queenshead Band. However, a third incarnation, formed in 1855 with 18 musicians and sharp new uniforms made of cloth from the mills, proved permanent. Many of the members were mill employees, and the group has sometimes been known as the Black Dyke Mills Band. Although the mills are no longer in operation, it continues to rehearse in its original quarters and to use its original logo featuring a stag and the Latin words “act justly and fear nothing.” From the beginning, the band maintained a reputation for high quality. Known far beyond Yorkshire, in 1906, it embarked on a 200-concert tour of the U.S. and Canada. The band has included members who have gone on to successful careers in the classical music world, including Jack Pinches, who became the solo trombonist in the band at age 16 and later served as the principal trombonist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Black Dyke principal cornetists William Lang and Maurice Murphy, who became principal trumpeters of the London Symphony Orchestra. The band has been a consistent winner at competitions in Britain and continental Europe; in 2014, it won the British Brass Band Championships of Great Britain for the 23rd time, a record; it has also won 15 times at the European Brass Band Championships.
The Black Dyke Band has a lengthy catalog of recordings, stretching back into the LP era. For many years, it was associated exclusively with the Chandos label, which, for a time, maintained its own brass band subsidiary, and it continues to record occasionally for Chandos. Since 2007, the Black Dyke Band has recorded mostly for Naxos, which issued the band’s recording John Rutter: Anthems, Hymns and Gloria for Brass Band in 2020. ~ James Manheim