Bergen harbour
Last weekend in Bergen I had a very good time. I got to see a lot of good people and I participated in the Norwegian Brass Band Championship.
We did not manage to do our best preformance on stage, but in the end we got 5th place out of 15 in our section.
Rapunzel cake for the birthday girl
I even found the time to go to my friends daughter’s birthday party. And enjoy some time in the company of friends I don’t get to see often enough and have good cake at the same time.
A good thing to think about when you feel inadequate
I’m going in to a very busy time of year. Garantert it has been quite busy for some time, but we’re are re-organising at work. And in a little more than a week I’m going to Bergen to play at the National Brass Band Championship.
Both are things I’m looking forward to quite a lot, so I don’t mind being busy this time. But I am also looking forward to when it will all calm down a bit. At the moment I keep feeling a bit inadequate at times, when I don’t have enough time to do everything at once, even if I know that I am doing my best and nobody has complained so far. So I keep telling myself that I can only do my best and that just has to be enough.
Photo from last year in Bergen
Here are a few posts from my previous trips to the National Championship:
Stress, illness and National Championship
And here are a few more from Bergen:
Farmer Street Art
This week I played my last concert with my band. The concert was great and there was quite a lot of people there. It was held in a small town in the country side. Right next to the concerts venue there was a very large piece of street art of a farmer.
Sunny day
Next year I’m going to play with a different band that rehers a lot closer to where I live.
More Street Art
Those of you that has read my previous posts will know that I spent last weekend in the lovely city of Bergen. I went up with my band to participate in the Norwegian National Brass Band Championship. We got on a bus up thursday evening and arrived late. Friday was spent rehearsing and the spare time I had I spent walking around town and shopping. The weather was quite shit, but it didn’t matter much. When evening came it was time to play in the contest. We where quite content with our performance and after there was a great party.
Saturday I went to listen to some of the other bands before I headed out to a good friend’s house to celeberate an Olaf themed birthday! I had a great time catching up with the wonderful people.
After this it was time to gather the band to party and get the results. For my band the results came as very bad news. But we decided to have a good time at the party and catch up with people from other bands.
Sunday it was time to get back on the bus and drive home. Very tired after a long period of rehersals, concerts that ended in a weekend of playing, partying and meeting great people!
Photo from hotel room
The day is finally here. After over a month of much rehersing and a lot of time spent with the band it’s finally the day of the Norwegian National Brass Band Championship. I hope we play our best and get to show the adjudicators that we know our piece very well. I also have a hope that all the work put in will give us a good score, but I do know we’re not the only ones that had been rehersing a lot and worked hard.
I hope you will all have a great weekend. No matter the results I know I will enjoy Bergen and all the lovely people here this weekend.
View from the rehersal room
The weekend of rehersals went good. We got a lot done, but there is still plenty of work left before we’re ready for the competition.
I have been writing here about how cold and dry it has been here lately and on Saturday it had reached a peak and a few young boys playing with fireworks set a Mountain nearby on fire. It’s very hard to put out the fire in that kind of conditions and a strong wind didn’t help. Luckily the fire brigade was helped out by some snow falling late in the evening.
Snow outside the window
There wasn’t much snow and thankfully the roads wasn’t covered. So I managed the trip out to practise just fine on Sunday.
Hope the weekend has been good to you all.
The track and field part of the stadium and car park
Being part of a band you are sometimes called upon to play on important occasions where they feel they need someone to play. So this Sunday I set off to Ålgård, in the local community of my band, to play at the official opening of their new large athlete stadium. They now have a new football stadium and some training fields and also a great stadium for track and field. With good wardrobes and seating required
Football stadium with the club motto
At the opening, in addition to the band, the Mayor and the leader of the sports board gave speeches, the teams and groups whom are getting to use the new stadiums marched in to the field with their flags and the kids had a chance to win medals by trying out different sports.
Flags in the wind
The weather was sunny, but a bit windy so it was a bit difficult to see the sheet music, but the gig went ok and we got a lot of applause. And as I sat in the car to drive home the rain started, I was thankful that didn’t happen only moments before!
