Kirsty began playing the piano at the age of six in her home town of Shipston-on-Stour in Warwickshire and at the age of nine started playing the cornet with Shipston Town Junior Band. She steadily progressed through the ranks of the junior band, and by the age of 15 the young Kirsty had risen to be the Principal Cornet of the main band!
As Principal Cornet, Kirsty led the band to two National Finals in the first Section and during this time Kirsty also had the distinction of being a member of the coveted National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain. On leaving school at 17, Kirsty moved to Huddersfield in West Yorkshire to study music at the University under the well known cornet player and former Principal of the Black Dyke Band, Phillip McCann.
Kirsty had a very successful time at University and by the time she graduated, had gained an LTCL Diploma (Licentiate of the Trinity College, London) in Performance, BA (Hons) in Music and a Masters Degree in Musical Performance. It was whilst studying at Huddersfield that Kirsty joined the Sellers College Band on the front row of the cornet section, which in 1992, after gaining sponsorship, the Band changed its name to Sellers Engineering whilst Kirsty made a move onto Flugel Horn.
After a successful two year tenure on Flugel, she moved back to cornet and not surprisingly, was soon appointed Principal - a position she made her own until September 2002. This was a particularly successful period for Kirsty; at the Spennymoor Entertainments Contest in 2000, she was awarded the Best Principal Cornet Prize and in the same year gained third prize in the British Open Solo Championships.
After a period of nearly thirteen years, Kirsty left Sellers to join CMFCB and it looks like her tenure here is to be every bit as successful, if not more so - she has since become the British Open Cornet Champion in 2003 and regained the Best Principal Cornet Prize at Spennymoor in both 2003 and 2004.
Other solo prizes to date include the British Open Solos 2004, Best Soloist award in the Mineworkers Entertainment Contest at Butlins in Skegness and in August of 2005 Kirsty also won the Best Principal Cornet award at the Land O’ Burns Contest while assisting Allan Ramsay’s Scottish Co-op Band.
More recently she was also awarded Best Soloist at the Dronfield Entertainment Contest, whilst at the Grand Shield contest in Blackpool, Kirsty was justifiably awarded yet another ‘Best Soloist’ prize!
