Brighouse & Rastrick Band

Brighouse & Rastrick Band play the Jim Marshall Auditorium on Sunday 13 June 2027, as part of IF: Milton Keynes International Festival. The festival is produced by The Stables, which brings world-class performers and events to venues and public spaces across Milton Keynes, and this is one of the acts they're hosting.

If you've never come across them, Brighouse & Rastrick — known to most as 'Briggus' — are a brass band with a long history of competing at the top. They've won the majority of the premier band championships, and more recently became the 2025 British Open Champions. They're widely regarded as one of the best and most consistent public subscription bands in the world, which is a bit of a specific tradition: rather than being funded by a local council or a single patron, they're supported by a broad base of subscribers.

They're probably best known for The Floral Dance, the recording that caught the British public's imagination in 1977. It spent nine weeks at number two in the singles chart, held off the top spot by Paul McCartney, and sold over a million copies to earn Gold and Silver discs. It's still the band's unofficial encore. In recent years they've stepped outside the brass band tradition to collaborate with folk singers Kate Rusby and The Unthanks, as well as classical actor Simon Callow.

The concert starts at 3:00pm, with doors opening at 2:30pm, and tickets are £27.50 including the booking fee.