A Loughborough College musician who represented the United Kingdom at a major international competition has returned a European champion for the third time.
Ashley Ellis triumphed in the 2016 European Drum Corps Championships in the Netherlands recently as part of The Company Performance Ensemble.
The 18 year old, who studies Public Services at Loughborough College and is hoping to join the RAF next year, has been playing the Melaphone with the American-style marching band – whose members come from all over the country - for five years. In that time he has not only won the European Championships with them three times but has also made it a triple at home after helping the band take the top spot at this year’s UK Championship.
“There is such a high level of commitment and fitness needed to play an instrument and follow the technical directions to reach a top performance standard.
“We spent more than 40 hours every month for ten months rehearsing for the European Championships then a week of solid practice before we travelled to the Netherlands.
“We have an original score composed in America and develop our own props and backdrops to give us an edge over the ten-minute performance – this year our theme was ‘Inspire Me’.
“There were bands from all over Europe, four of them were from the UK and after the semi-finals in the afternoon we qualified for the final twelve in the evening – but it was a long and tense wait because we went on last.
“When they announced we had won with a score of 89.85 out of 100 it was a fantastic feeling.
“This has been a great year for us – and we are already underway with rehearsals for 2017.
“This time we won’t only be competing in the UK and the European Championships, we’ll also be heading to the U.S. to the World Championships in Indianapolis. I can’t wait.”
Pictured: Loughborough College student Ashley Ellis with the winner’s cup from the 2016 European Drum Corps Championship