The night we played the Ironbridge Suite at Telford was really two performances in one. First the band ran the awards ceremony - a sting to walk the presenter up to the stage, then a different piece of music to bring each winner up to accept and have their photo taken, played live and timed to the moment rather than fired off a laptop. Then, after a very short turnaround once the trophies were done, the rest of the band took the stage and the room turned from ceremony to party. Two jobs, one booking, and the live award stings are the part most bands cannot do.
The Ironbridge Suite, upstairs
The Ironbridge Suite is one of the big rooms at Telford International Centre, upstairs in the building, holding up to a thousand and dividing into three sections (IB1, IB2 and IB3) when an event wants less. The centre itself is a purpose-built convention venue with more than 15,000 square metres of space, on-site hotels and an in-house event production company - so an awards night here arrives with serious AV and staging already in the building, and a band slots into that rather than fighting it.
More than one room here
We are not tied to the Ironbridge Suite. Telford International Centre is a big, flexible building with a string of suites at different scales, and the same band scales to whatever the event takes - a ceremony-and-party night for a thousand in the Ironbridge, or a tighter dinner in one of the smaller rooms. The award-stings work travels to any of them; so does the full showband.
Playing the ceremony, then the party
The award stings are a craft of their own - reading the room, catching the presenter’s walk, lifting the winner onto the stage and holding the energy through the photo - and we have built it into awards nights across the Midlands and South Wales. There is more on how we run live award stings here. After the ceremony the evening is a normal Brotherhood corporate set: the full showband with brass, two hour-long sets blended and loaded with floor-fillers, a DJ around them. We travel up from South Wales self-sufficient, mix on our own or the house system, and run in-ears rather than wedges.
The Brotherhood are South Wales’ go-to corporate band, working the Midlands regularly. Check our availability for your awards night, conference or gala at Telford International Centre.
