The Norfolk County Symphonic Wind Band excelled on Friday 7 July as part of the Music For Youth National Festival. The band had been invited to play at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall having impressed at the Regional Festival at Snape Maltings. They rose to the occasion with a virtuoso performance of three pieces – Critical Mass by Todd Stalter, John Williams Swings arr. Jay Bocook, and Chase the Sun by Rob Wiffin.

The adjudicator said “This was amazing!” He couldn’t fault the performance and continued to say that the band “set some fairly unbelievable speeds and some really impressive changes as you go through really complex music… I’m really looking forward to hearing a lot more from you.”

For some of the students, this was their final performance in Norfolk County Symphonic Wind Band before they head off to higher education or similar in September. We would like to congratulate them on their success and thank all of the players for their hard work!

*Update* The Norfolk County Symphonic Wind Band have been selected to perform in the Music For Youth Proms at Royal Albert Hall, London, in November 2017! Tickets for friends, families and supporters are now on sale from the MFY website with an Early Bird discount of 15% with the code ‘28478’.


The Music For Youth National Festival ran from 4th – 8th July 2017. Around 8,000 of the UK’s brightest young musicians were selected from Regional Festivals to come to perform at world-class venues and city-centre locations across Birmingham.

In addition to the Norfolk County Symphonic Wind Band, there are other ensembles representing Norfolk at the MFY National Festival; two ensembles from St Martha’s Primary School, ‘Mini Maestros’ and ‘Ukelear Power’ led by Jessica Berners, and Cantebene vocal group from Springwood High School.