Gunnedah Shire Band players beat out competition at Australian National Band Championships
Gunnedah Shire Band has three solo champions in its midst.
Amity Cleal, Oscar King and Harry Grant beat out the best in Australia on Thursday at the Australian National Band Championships in Brisbane.
Amity was named Junior Bb Cornet Champion for the second consecutive year with 92 points, Oscar King was named Junior Contrabass Tuba Champion with 90 points, and Harry Grant was named Junior Soprano Cornet Champion with 88 points.
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Band master Laurence Rowe SAID the teenagers will have "a few more successes ahead of them ... if they keep up their hard work".
The band competed in the Open B Grade section and placed sixth out of 16 bands.
"I think to finish sixth in the large field was very credible," Mr Rowe said.
"Considering the age of our band - many of them are early teenagers and less - we have a very bright future, I believe."
Mr Rowe said the band was ranking second after Friday's performances but he felt the band played to a higher standard on Sunday.
"The band played really well on both days. After we played our hymn piece and test piece, we were second in that large field. We'd made a few blips in our performance of the test piece so we thought we might not have scored as well," Mr Rowe said.
"The second day we thought we played better but sadly the adjudicator [Barry Gott] didn't agree.
"It's a little bit disappointing we ran outside a place after all the work we did.
"I think overall the standard of competition up there in B grade was very high this year. It was pretty obvious to me that a couple of bands from Newcastle have pulled their socks up."
Band conductor Anthony Rowe said "everyone did themselves proud" at Nationals.
The band will now focus its energies on preparing for the NSW State Band Championship in August.