4th Section Test Piece 2016 National Finals of the British Brass Band Championship. Music from Kantara was written in 1994 and was first performed by Watership Brass, a band based near Newbury. The title comes from the name of the former home of the composer, in Winchester, a name which was inherited from the previous owners, and which presumably comes from the ruined castle of that name on the Northern coast of Cyprus. The music is not programmatic: it does not tell a story. It is a three-movement suite of absolute music, in a tuneful and straightforward idiom. The slow, central movement calls for playing of a sensitive, vocal nature.
