After many weeks of anticipation, ‘Chris Hazell Day’ finally arrived this week at the Loxley Silver Band rehearsal room. The date has been eagerly awaited since soon after Chris’s daughter Ruth joined the band on repiano cornet. Chris Hazell studied composition at the Royal College of Music before joining Decca in the 70’s as a producer. There he continued the legendary recordings of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble amongst many others. Chris is best known in brass band circles for his trilogy ‘Brass Cats’ (originally written for Philip Jones), based on his experiences with several pets that he had at the time, and Loxley Band has had a couple of these tunes in their repertoire for some time. So when the opportunity came along for them to play the Mr Jums & Kraken for Chris, they jumped at the chance. Loxley Band, under the direction of MD Lee Dunkley, played through the tunes for Chris several times during the rehearsal and were able to take advantage of his in-depth knowledge of the pieces and the fact that in some areas major chords had been modified by the arrangers into minor ones. This was quickly addressed and the Loxley arrangements now have the correct chord structure as per the composers’ original intention. Chris was certainly impressed with Loxley’s presentation and went on to say with a smile that: “I’m glad my daughter has chosen a good band to play with”.