Fairey Band

The Fairey Band is a brass band based in Heaton Chapel in , Greater Manchester. The band has achieved fame in modern music circles with its appearances playing Acid Brass although they still play traditional brass band music and participate each year in the Whit Friday Brass Band contests.

Its name comes from Sir Richard Fairey and the Fairey Aviation Company, famous in later years for the Fairey Delta 2 aircraft - the first aircraft in level flight to exceed 1,000 mph, and had an important contribution to the shape of Concorde and its droop nose. An early signature tune for the band was Beaufighters, after a fighter aircraft Bristol Beaufighter made at Fairey in Heaton Chapel (and elsewhere) for "Ministry of Aircraft Production".

The band was formed in 1937 as the Fairey Aviation Works Band by workers at the aircraft factory. This was at a time when the company was producing aircraft that would see plenty of action in the first few weeks of World War II, although sadly few of its aircraft would be of sufficient calibre to pose a real threat to German aircraft. Its aircraft, especially the old-fashioned yet versatile and destructive Fairey Swordfish, mainly carried torpedoes for the Fleet Air Arm. Fairey were taken over by Westland Aircraft of Yeovil, chiefly due to its innovative Fairey Rotodyne.

It became known as the Williams Fairey Band when Fairey Engineering was taken over by Williams Holdings in 1986. This company was bought by the American Kidde fire safety company in 2000, although the band retained the Williams Fairey name. The sponsorship by Kidde finished at the end of 2002. In 2003, they were sponsored by FP (Music), a subsidiary of Fosters Partners (Asia). At the beginning of 2010 the band acquired a new sponsorship in the shape of the British brass instrument maker "Geneva Instruments" and became known as the "Fairey (Geneva) Band". This arrangement ceased during 2011 whence the band reverted to its original name of "The Fairey Band".