Black Dyke Band, formerly John Foster & Son Black Dyke Mills Band, is one of the oldest and most well-known

brass band A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting primarily of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands (particularl ...

s in the world. It originated as multiple community bands founded by John Foster at his family's textile mill in Queensbury,

Bradford Bradford is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in West Yorkshire, England. It became a municipal borough in 1847, received a city charter in 1897 and, since the Local Government Act 1972, 1974 reform, the city status in the United Kingdo ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a Metropolitan counties of England, metropolitan and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and east, South Yorkshire and De ...

, England, in the mid-19th century. The ensemble has become prominent in competitive band championships and through recordings for film and television. The band is well-known for recording the soundtrack to the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

gardening makeover series ''

Ground Force ''Ground Force'' is a British garden makeover television series originally broadcast by the BBC between 1997 and 2005. The series was originally hosted by Alan Titchmarsh, Charlie Dimmock and Tommy Walsh. Production The series was created b ...

'' in 1997, and appeared in the

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...

edition of

Victoria Wood Victoria Wood (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, musician, screenwriter, and director. Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over several decades, and her live comedy act ...

's sitcom ''

Dinnerladies Lunch lady, in Canada and the U.S., is a term for a woman who cooks and serves food in a school cafeteria. The equivalent term in the United Kingdom is dinner lady. The role is also sometimes known as cafeteria lady or school caterer. Sometimes ...

'' in 1999. In 1998, they played on the

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

-nominated song "That'll Do" from '' Babe: Pig in the City''. They have featured on recordings and live appearances by acts including

the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained global fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and the piano, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John ...

and

Tori Amos Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full ...

. In 2014, the band won the

National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

for a record 23rd time, and the British Open Championship for another record 30th time. They have also won the European Championships a record thirteen times, most recently in 2015.

History

The band was formerly the band of the Black Dyke Mills in Queensbury,

, England, a company owned by John Foster. Foster, a

French horn The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most o ...

player, joined with others in a small brass and reed band in Queensbury in 1816. This band faltered, and another band formed – called the Queenshead Band – which consisted of 18 musicians around 1843. This second band also faltered, but in 1855, Foster and other musicians established the new mill band, and outfitted it with uniforms made from the mill's own cloth. Most of the musicians in the band also worked at the mill, and a close bond was fostered with the local community. The band has remained active since that time, and still rehearses in its original rooms. Black Dyke was the first band to achieve the "Grand Slam" in 1985 by winning the Yorkshire regional, European, British Open and National Championship contests. They were also voted BBC Band of the Year. They appeared in an episode of Victoria Wood's ''

dinnerladies Lunch lady, in Canada and the U.S., is a term for a woman who cooks and serves food in a school cafeteria. The equivalent term in the United Kingdom is dinner lady. The role is also sometimes known as cafeteria lady or school caterer. Sometimes ...

'' sitcom in 1999.

European Championships

Recordings

Black Dyke Band has made over 350 recordings, including one of the first brass band recordings in 1904 and

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

. It has recorded with classical

bass trombonist The bass trombone (, ) is the bass instrument in the trombone family of brass instruments. Modern instruments are pitched in the same B♭ as the tenor trombone but with a larger bore, bell and mouthpiece to facilitate low register playing, and u ...

Douglas Yeo Douglas Yeo (born 1955) is an American bass trombonist who played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 2012, where he held the John Moors Cabot Bass Trombone Chair. He was also on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. In 2012 he ...

, and pop acts

Peter Gabriel Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and human rights activist. He came to prominence as the original frontman of the rock band Genesis. He left the band in 1975 and launched a solo career wit ...

and

The Beautiful South The Beautiful South were an English pop rock group formed in 1988 by Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway, two former members of the Kingston upon Hull, Hull group the Housemartins, both of whom performed lead and backing vocals. Other members stayin ...

. The band also worked with Gabriel on the highly acclaimed Millennium Show, featured in the

Millennium Dome The Millennium Dome was the original name of the large dome-shaped building on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East (London sub region), South East London, England, which housed a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millen ...

, as well as recording the music for the BBC programme ''

''. In September 1968, the band released a single on

The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

’

Apple Records Apple Records is a British record label founded by the Beatles in 1968 as a division of Apple Corps Ltd. It was initially intended as a creative outlet for the Beatles, both as a group and individually, plus a selection of other artists inclu ...

label. The A-side was an instrumental composed by

Lennon–McCartney Lennon–McCartney is the songwriting partnership between the English musicians John Lennon (1940–1980) and Paul McCartney (born 1942) of the Beatles. It is widely considered one of the greatest, best known and most successful musical collabo ...

called "Thingumybob" (the theme to a

London Weekend Television London Weekend Television (LWT; now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV (TV network), ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00&nbs ...

sitcom A sitcom (short for situation comedy or situational comedy) is a genre of comedy produced for radio and television, that centers on a recurring cast of character (arts), characters as they navigate humorous situations within a consistent settin ...

of the same name starring

Stanley Holloway Stanley Augustus Holloway (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English actor, comedian, singer and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles Stanley Holloway on stage and screen, on stage and screen, especially t ...

). The flipside was a brass band instrumental version of another

song, " Yellow Submarine". The single was released under the name John Foster & Son Ltd Black Dyke Mills Band, produced by McCartney, and was one of the first four singles issued on the Apple label. In 1979, the Black Dyke Mills Band worked again with McCartney on a track for the

Wings A wing is a type of fin that produces both lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-drag ratio, which compares the bene ...

album ''

Back to the Egg ''Back to the Egg'' is the seventh and final studio album by the British-American rock band Wings, released in June 1979 on Parlophone in the UK and Columbia Records in North America (their first for the label). Co-produced by Chris Thomas, ...

''. In August 2009, the band undertook a tour of Australia with multi-instrumentalist James Morrison which culminated in a concert at the

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue Performing arts center, performing arts centre in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive b ...

Members

As of 2025, the principals of the band's line up included: * Soprano cornet: Connor Lennon * Principal cornet: Richard Marshall * Flugelhorn: Phoebe Mallinson * Solo horn: Siobhan Edwards * Solo baritone: Mike Kavanagh * Solo trombone: Adam Warburton * Bass trombone: Adam Reed * Solo euphonium: Adam Bokaris * Solo E bass: Gavin Saynor * Solo B bass: Matthew Routley * Drums and Percussion: Logan Thompson The band's current principal conductor and director of music is the Welsh

euphonium The euphonium ( ; ; ) is a tenor- and baritone-voiced valved brass instrument. The euphonium is a member of the large family of valved bugles, along with the tuba and flugelhorn, characterised by a wide conical bore. Most instruments have thr ...

virtuoso Prof.

Nicholas Childs Nicholas John Childs (born 7 October 1961) is a Welsh musician, conductor, composer and brass educator. Childs is known for his conducting of brass bands, winning numerous championships, his teaching at the university level, and his recordings ...

. His predecessor was trumpet player

James Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biology, molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper in ''Nature (journal), Nature'' proposing the Nucleic acid ...

. Paul Lovatt-Cooper was the band's 'composer in association' and former principal percussionist. He retired from playing in early 2011 in order to concentrate on his teaching, conducting and composition. Black Dyke Band is the brass band in residence at the

Royal Northern College of Music The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is a conservatoire located in Manchester, England. It is one of four conservatoires associated with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. In addition to being a centre of music education ...

in Manchester, and Childs also conducts the RNCM Brass Band.

Former members

* John Maines, principal trombone * Maurice Murphy, principal cornet * James Shepherd, principal cornet

References

External links

Black Dyke Band

BBC News - Bradford - Train name is high note for band
{{DEFAULTSORT:Black Dyke Band British instrumental musical groups Apple Records artists Musical groups from Bradford Musical groups established in 1855 People from Queensbury, West Yorkshire British brass bands