Latest News

Work Hard - Play Hard - 13th July

DT have been very busy this weekend. Starting on Friday, Corps members visited Goldington Middle school in Bedford where they ran drumcorp workshops enabling young pupils to have a go... Saturday saw members join other local musicians to form a samba band to lead the parade for Bedfords river festival 2008. In the evening after sectional rehearsals they returned to the festival to have fun at the fair and to watch fireworks. No lie in on Sunday morning though with a full days rehearsals of Awaking the Elements' starting at 9am..... Next week sees DT take on 6th Hove again at the Academy Brass contest in Barnsley.

Result at Colchester - 22nd June

DT came a very close runner up in Division 1 this weekend. Long time rivals 6th Hove were placed just 0.8 points ahead. This was Thunders first contest of the 2008 season with their new show: Awaking the Elements' . The Corps took home the Colourguard, Percussion and Music caption awards and are now rehearsing hard for their next contest at Barnsley. More photos here.

Band Camp Success - 6th May 'We are exactly where we need to be...'

After a full weekend of drill, fun & music in the sun at Biggleswade RFC, DT are certainly ' Awaking the Elements' of their 2008 show. More photos here.

Colourguard rejoin the Corps - 12th April

After a successful winter season with Alliance Open guard, members are now back with the Corps to train for the summer show entitled' Awaking the Elements

Wicked Day 31st Oct 07
For Photos & video of Distant Thunder taking part in 'Wicked Day' in London click here

‘Wicked’, the show of choice for this year, was received well by the Corps as they set about learning the music and helping to settle in our rookies. It seems as if Claire and Paul our new drummers, Matt our new Mellophone player and Chris our new Soprano player have been here for ever now. ( At the same time our Colour Guard worked hard to achieve a very respectable 9th place at the British WinterGuard Championships in April as Serenity with their show Coin Operated Boy)

As we reached Easter and the first camp at Biggleswade, the show was put on the field to start learning the drill in time for the first competition at Ouse Valley Sounds in Bedford. Being the only Division 1 Corps competing didn’t matter as the Corps enjoyed the experience of getting back into competition.

As the summer progressed we competed at Colchester, Academy Magic in Barnsley in the first half of the season and then after a two week summer break, returned to work hard at camp over August Bank Holiday where changes were made to the show and lots of cleaning begun. We then competed at Brass Explosion in Stafford and Midland Impact in Hinckley before taking to the road to Holland for the DCE Championships in Rotterdam. The Corps enjoyed a paddle in the sea at Scheviningen in the Netherlands and then a long day rehearsing in The Hague ahead of performing at Drum Corps Rocks The Town in the centre of Rotterdam on the evening of 28th September, a very enjoyable and relaxed evening. Next day at the Sparta Stadium everything went well with a pleasing result in the pre lims where we managed to increase our score some 12 points on last year’s score gaining 64 points. Although we did not manage to make it into the finals in the evening, everyone was happy with their performance and we enjoyed a great day cheering on the rest of the British Corps who were competing. We were happy to see Senators win and become DCE Champions 2007. We had a good journey home the next day (via the Chocolate Factory of course) and we ended our long weekend exhausted but happy.

The next weekend 7th October was BYBA finals. We finished in 3rd place with 80 points, Hove and Kingswood taking second and first place. Elphaba the green witch was finally revealed in the form of Drum Major as Kayley was transformed into a green vision for the day!

This year in May we also took delivery of our new truck. What a difference this has made to our band lives! The truck started off life in light blue paint but after a couple of sessions by a few members rubbing it down and preparing it for painting it was sent off to be professionally painted in Kent and came back transformed into our beautiful black truck! Warren’s pride and joy!

As usual the year has seen many birthday parties, Christmas parties, barbeques and other social events as well as a television appearance and to end the ‘Wicked ‘ year, Distant Thunder have been asked to play at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London on 28th October at the annual Wicked day. A very exciting way to end the year. Before this, the whole Corps is off to London on Tuesday 16th October to see Wicked the musical.

As we say goodbye to 2007 we are looking forward to our presentation evening on 3rd of November where it all wraps up for another year. Then we will be starting all over again straight away with preparations and rehearsals for the various competitors in the BYBA Individuals and Ensembles competition on 24th November.

The 2008 Distant Thunder Show will be announced shortly. Watch this space!

Think you’d like to be a part of Distant Thunder? No experience at all necessary! Email management@distanttunder.org or phone 01933 355793 for more information.