The line from the classic Harold Arlen tune, Over the Rainbow, has indeed proven to be true for the Fountain City Brass Band. After winning both the North American Brass Band Association Championships and the U.S. Open Brass Band Championships three years in a row, the Fountain City Brass Band was fortunate enough to launch a tour that would go down in banding history.
As winners of the 2008 U.S. Open, the band was invited to compete in the following year's Brass in Concert Championship, as well as to give numerous concerts and youth workshops throughout the United Kingdom, record its second album and be the first American band to compete in the Scottish Open Championship. It was a lengthy trip that saw the band overseas during the American holiday of Thanksgiving which, being away from their homes and families, was spent as comfortably as possible in a castle-turned resort.
A few days after this, the band's dreams really did come true when the Fountain City Brass Band became the first American band to win a top level brass band competition in the UK with its victory at the Scottish Open. Aptly enough, their choice for this performance was Bertrand Moren's thrilling composition Dreams that also garnered the best soloist prize on the day for one of the founding members of the band, trombonist William Hess.
Given this remarkable success, that the future seems brighter than ever and that the band itself hails from Kansas, the Fountain City Brass Band has titled this recording Over the Rainbow
