Black Dyke Band

In 1816 Peter Wharton founded a brass and reed band in the Yorkshire village of Queenshead – later to become Queensbury. John Foster, apart from being the founder of Black Dyke Mills, played French Horn in this band. It has been said on many occasions that Black Dyke was formed from it; however, this is not strictly true, as “Peter Wharton’s band went out of existence through loss of members”. In 1833 a new band was formed named ‘Queenshead Band’, which may well have contained players from the former band. It is reported that this Band reached its zenith from 1838 to 1843, at which time it consisted of 18 musicians”.

Black Dyke Band is the most recorded band in the world with over 350 recordings and growing every year, in October 2020 the band’s recording of music by John Rutter become the first by a brass band to reach No.1 in the classical music chart.

It is also the most successful contesting band in the world having won the European Championships thirteen times, most recently in 2015, the British Open no fewer than 30 times (most recently 2014) and the National Championships of Great Britain 23 times (most recently 2014). In 2009, and again in 2011, 2012 and 2013, the band became Champion Band at the English National Championships and were named English National Champions in 2014 by virtue of having won the National Brass Band Championships in October 2014. In recent years, the band secured an unprecedented hat trick of wins at the Yorkshire regional championships in 2016, 17 and 18, which they followed up with further wins in 2020, 2022 and 2023 (there was no contest in 2021 due to Covid-19).