THE Brighouse and Rastrick Band members happily adapt to wherever they play.

In York alone, the West Yorkshire musicians have performed in the Nave of the Minster with folk group The Unthanks and at York Barbican.

On Sunday night, the Briggus brass players switch location again, this time to the Grand Opera House.

“With our calibre of musician, our line-up can adapt to any conditions and any situation,” says conductor Phil Chalk.

“The more open spaces, such as the York Barbican, tend to absorb some of the top-end sounds, which is built into the design of these spaces now, whereas the older halls or theatres, such as the Grand Opera House, tend to be more ‘boomy’.”

A further factor comes into play, with potentially amusing or even alarming consequences.

“You have to be aware of the proximity of the audience,” says Phil. “You don’t want them to feel like they’re in the line of fire. You can almost see their hair parting when you start a march if you’re close up.”

No such problem will afflict Sunday’s concert, where band and audience will be divided by the (unused) orchestra pit.

Phil promises a wide and varied programme. “At our concerts we usually do a selection of traditional brass band pieces, orchestral transcriptions, brass band commissions and some film music,” he says.

“If we’re playing at a brass festival, where we’re requested to play new pieces, the programme will be more modern in flavour to challenge the audience, but with the Grand Opera House show, we want people to go away with a smile on their face.

“We’re always very mindful of playing to our audience at each particular show while also maintaining the high standard of our band with contest pieces that are very avant-garde and technically very difficult.”

The Briggus were crowned the National Champions of Great Britain in 2010 and 2011 at the Royal Albert Hall, and the band’s members will always strive to match such achievements.

“From my perspective, we always have to challenge ourselves in order for our musicians to improve musically and technically,” says Phil. “We’re competing with a lot of other entertainment, and if brass band music is to continue to exist and thrive, as a leading band, we have to be seen to be taking the lead.”

The Briggus continues to be a public subscription band of non-professional players, in contrast to bands allied to a factory or brewery or colliery.

“Will we remain a financially independent subscription band, doing our own fundraising? The answer is a resounding ‘yes’ to keeping it that way,” says Phil. “If you look at bands that have been funded through the coal board or industry, when those industries dwindled, one of the first things to go has been the brass band. So it’s essential that we continue to earn our keep the way we do.”

Variety is the spice of life for the Briggus members. “We’re an amateur band with teachers, engineers etc in our ranks, and we have to keep the band members interested by doing different things,” says Phil.

“It’s about finding new pockets of interest, like the concert we did with The Unthanks over the past two years or Kate Rusby’s Christmas concerts, which feature five of our band members as her ‘Brass Boys’.”

More than 50 per cent of the membership is still drawn from Yorkshire, although Phil lives “just over the hill” in Saddleworth [the Pennine border town with its own perennially wet microclimate] and other members come from further afield.

“All our musicians are well aware of the commitment required to play between 35 and 50 concerts a year,” he says.

On Sunday, those musicians will be playing such pieces as Berlioz’s Overture, The Corsair. “It’s a fantastic overture, very technically demanding, typical Berlioz, and the Grand Opera House is a very fitting venue for it,” says Phil.

“We’ll also be doing Hamish McCunn’s The Land Of The Mountain And The Flood, which is an original work for brass bands but also one of the few pieces that was also composed for a symphony orchestra at the same time.”

Sunday’s soloists will include principal cornet player Stuart Linguard, flugelhorn player Lucy Murphy and David Thornton on euphonium, as the band once more bound for the National Championships in October gives York a blast of brass that tugs at the heartstrings.

“Brass band music is so moving partly because brass was always used to give an extra dynamic to the sound at the top of a symphony orchestra by such composers as Mahler and Wagner in the Ring Cycle – but in a symphony orchestra the maximum number of brass players is only 12, whereas we have 28,” says Phil.

“Put that number with the texture of our sound, which is planted in our psyche from hymns, and it creates something unique, and that’s why it moves us.”

• The Brighouse and Rastrick Band, Grand Opera House, York, Sunday, 7.30pm. Tickets update: still available on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york