The Invercargill Garrison Band Inc is celebrating its formation in 1867 with a 150th Reunion Concert at Centrestage Theatre held on Friday 24 November 2017.

Being one of the oldest bands in New Zealand the band has a proud record of community involvement and contest results. There are currently two bands, an Auxiliary Training Band that competes in the C Grade Division and a Senior Band that competes in the A Grade Division at National and Regional Contests.

Last year the band was selected to represent New Zealand at the Shanghai International Tourism Festival.

The band is renowned for being the birth place of the now world famous Invercargill March composed by Alex Lithgow in 1900.

The band has been blessed with a wealth of talented musicians over its 150 years but a few players over recent years that have excelled at high levels include Rodney Sutton, winner of 28 national tiles and member of 4 National Bands of New Zealand.

Blair Sinclair, trained with the Invercargill Garrison Band and now principal Trombone at at the BBC Northern Symphony in the UK.

Kevin Dell, selected 10 times to represent New Zealand in the National Brass Band.

and Megan Gooding, selected to represent New Zealand in 2017 National Brass Band which were placed second in the World Championships in Holland.

Interest in the bands remains strong with the Invercargill Garrison Band having 30 players and the Invercargill Garrison Auxiliary band has 20 students being trained for promotion to the Senior Band.

The band also supplies tutors to Saturday morning out of school music classes.

When asked about the Band’s finest hour’s over the last 150 years, they came up with three –

1972 – being promoted to the A Grade championship.
1973 – winning the A Grade Championship.
1988 – 3rd at the World Championships held at Brisbane in conjunction with World Expo.
Being selected to represent New Zealand at the 2017 Shanghai International Tourism Music Festival.

We are sure that there have been many more!

This evenings concert at Centrestage is a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear the two bands, with soloists and a guest conductor, celebrating 150 years of brass music in the south.

The concert starts at 7pm

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