Results
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£40.00Variations on a Theme of Michael Tippett (Brass Band - Score only)
A Centenary Tribute by Michael Ball, Edward Gregson, Elgar Howarth, Bramwell Tovey and Philip WilbyThis unique 'pice d'occasion' arose out of a telephone conversation in 2004 with Alan Wycherley, who was the soprano cornet player of the Foden's Richardson Band at the time. He indicated that the band would like to include an original birthday tribute for Edward Gregson (60) and Elgar Howarth (70) in its concert at the 2005 RNCM Festival of Brass in Manchester. I have been Artistic Director of Manchester's Festival of Brass since it was established in 1990 as a BBC Radio 3 series, As the centenary of the birth of Sir Michael Tippett fell on 5 January 2005, I devised this collective work as a way of embracing all three anniversaries in a novel way.The idea of joint compositions is not a new one in the classical music world. In the 1860s, Verdi was joined by a number of his contemporaries in a Requiem Mass for Rossini. In this country there have been a number of orchestral examples over the past fifty years, but never before for the brass band. Although Tippett composed only one work for brass band, Festal Brass with Blues, his orchestral works and operas are full of idiomatic brass writing. The theme I chose for this celebration is one of Tippet's most memorable miniatures featuring wind and brass. In the opera Midsummer Marriage it marks the entry of the Ancients. It is also included in the orchestral Suite in D (1948), for the Birthday of Prince Charles.I invited five of the leading contemporary voices in brass band music to add their own creative perspectives to the little Tippett theme, with it's characteristic rhythms, embellishments and modality - the Lydian mode. Each contribution was designed to fit into a tonal and formal template to give the whole work a flow and continuity. In Danse des Amis, Bramwell Tovey has composed a jazzy, humorous variation. Inspiration came from Tippett's love of jazz and, more personally, from the characteristically syncopated gait of the distinguished music critic John Amis, who Tovey once observed leaving a performance of Tippett's opera King Priam before the end. Incidentally, that performance was conducted by Elgar Howarth.We hear Edward Gregson in lyrical mode. His Midsummer Song is redolent of the sound world of Tippett's opera A Midsummer Marriage and it ends with a brief reference to a favourite of Gregson's, Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra. Michael Ball provides a brief moment of light, airy activity bringing to mind perhaps Tippett's love of Shakespearian fantasy, especially The Tempest. Elgar Howarth juxtaposes a slowed down version of the processional theme with distant recollections of fanfares from King Priam. Philip Wilby has rounded the tribute off with a spectacular fugue. During its inexorable progress Wilby ingeniously introduces the two other birthday references - the three-note musical signature that Elgar Howarth includes in much of his music and the characteristic theme which begins Edward Gregson's substantial work for brass an organ The Trumpets of the Angels. An elaborated reprise of Tippett's little theme is followed by a dynamic coda.- Paul HindmarshDuration: 13.00
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£125.00
Dark Arteries Suite - Gavin Higgins
Dark Arteries was commissioned by Rambert Dance Company and first performed in May 2015 with the Tredegar Town Band sharing the stage with Rambert dancers. Dark Arteries is a personal and at times highly wrought response to the Miners Strike and its aftermath. It is in three movements, the first and last are expansive, with widely contrasting sound worlds, from dark, brooding melodies and the haunting sounds of solo flugel horn to wild syncopations on cornets, suggestive of an imposing, but often bleak mining landscape.In 2016 Higgins re-worked Dark Arteries into a virtuoso concert suite, which captures the essence of the work in three connected movements.Dark Arteries Suite was premiered by the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, conducted by Bramwell Tovey at the Barbican Centre, London, 22 April 2017.
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£10.99
Overture for Brass (Score) - arr. Mark Freeh
From symphonies to big band jazz, and from chamber works to Latin American music and film scores, the music of Argentian-born composer and arranger Carlos Franzetti (b.1948) has won many prestigious awards. This exciting six minute overture, Overture for Brass, was arranged by Mark Freeh and has been recorded by the GUS Band, conducted by Bramwell Tovey.Brass Band Grade 4: Advanced Youth and 3rd SectionDuration: 6 minutes.
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£45.00
Overture for Brass (Score & Parts) - Carlos Franzetti
From symphonies to big band jazz, and from chamber works to Latin American music and film scores, the music of Argentian-born composer and arranger Carlos Franzetti (b.1948) has won many prestigious awards. This exciting six minute overture, Overture for Brass, was arranged by Mark Freeh and has been recorded by the GUS Band, conducted by Bramwell Tovey.Brass Band Grade 4: Advanced Youth and 3rd SectionDuration: 6 minutes
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£85.00
The Alchymist's Journal - Kenneth Hesketh
The Alchymist's Journal (Variants for Brass Band) was commissioned by Faber Music Band Consultant Paul Hindmarsh in 2001, with the support of the Brass Band Heritage Trust, as a substantial concert/contest challenge that would be within the compass of the country's most able youth and first section bands. It received its first performance in January 2002, by Black Dyke Band under Nicholas Childs, as part of the Royal Northern College of Music Festival of Brass.Since its original publication, composer Kenneth Hesketh has made a number of revisions to the work. Most of these were included in the recording made by Foden's Band (Bramwell Tovey) for NMC Recordings (NMC D142). This definitive new edition, including all the composer's revisions, has been specially prepared for the 2015 National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain and is the text that all bands performing will be required to use.Brass Band Grade 5: 1st SectionDuration: 12 minutes.
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£34.95By Water and the Word - Jonathan Bates
DURATION: 4'00". DIFFICULTY: 4th+. 'By Water and the Word' was composed for 2020 Brass Band Summer School in memory of it's long-standing course administrator Philip Biggs, who passed away in 2019. Aside from his work with BBSS, Philip was also the renowned administrator for the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain where my first opportunities as a writer of brass music were presented. It's a certainty to say that without Philip's work at the head of this organisation, there's zero chance I would be able to do what I do today as a musician, and for that it was a huge honour to write this short work in his memory. Under Maestro Bramwell Tovey, each course would conclude with an encore of The Day Thou Gavest (St. Clements) and one of the most used hymn tunes throughout the week was The Church's One Foundation (Aurelia). Since then, these two tunes have become synonymous with the NYBBGB and in turn Philip's life & work, so I felt it fitting to combine these two wonderful sacred melodies into a new work paying homage to those memories. .
In Stock: Estimated dispatch 1-3 working days
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£36.00Edward Gregson: The World Rejoicing
DescriptionComposer's NoteIn searching for a common link between the brass band traditions of the various European countries that commissioned this work, I considered the fact that hymns have always played an important role in the relationship that brass bands have with their particular communities; and thus I turned to a well-known Lutheran chorale, Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank we all our God), written around 1636 by Martin Rinkart, with the melody attributed to Johann Cruger. A number of composers have incorporated this chorale into their music, most famously J.S.Bach in his Cantatas no. 79 and 192, and Mendelssohn in the Lobsegang movement of his 2nd Symphony (the harmonization of which is usually used when this hymn is sung).It seemed fitting therefore for me to return to a compositional form I have used many times before (Variations) and to write a work based on this hymn. I have used it in a similar way to that which I employed in my Variations on Laudate Dominum of 1976 - that is, rather than writing a set of variations using elaborations of the complete tune, I have taken various phrases from the chorale and used them within the context of other musical material, applying an overall symphonic process of continuous variation and development. The structure, or sub-divisions of the work, which is through composed and plays without a break, is as follows: Prelude, Capriccio, La Danza 1, Processional, La Danza 2, Arias and Duets, Fuga Burlesca, Chorale, and Postlude.The work is also partly autobiographical - in the manner say of Strauss's Ein Heldenleben - in that I have incorporated into the score brief quotations from many of my other major works for brass band. In that respect, The World Rejoicing sums up a particular facet of my life as a composer, and reflects the admiration I have always had for what is surely one of the great amateur music-making traditions in the world.The World Rejoicing is dedicated 'in loving memory of my brother', Bramwell Logan Gregson, who sadly passed away in the Autumn of 2018.Edward Gregson
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£34.95
DEPARTED HEROES (Brass Band Set) - Bramwell Coles
The ominous silences heard in Departed Heroes at dramatic moments and the falling chromatic sequences laced throughout give this stirring march a sad tint, most appropriate in this salute to Salvation Army warriors of the past.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£29.95
HEROES OF THE COMBAT (Brass Band Set) - Bramwell Coles
Published two years after the end of World War Two, the title of this march projects a dual symbolism of which the composer was so fond, earlier examples being The Flag of Freedom and Victors Acclaimed. The introduction of this march is more extended and subsequent strains demonstrate a trait loved by both Coles and Marshall; the shifting between triple and duple subdivisions of the beat within attractive melodies and accompaniments.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
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£29.95
EXETER TEMPLE (Brass Band Set) - Leslie Condon
This march was written for the centenary of Exeter Tempe Corps in 1981 and first played in Exeter Cathedral during those celebrations. While the march is intentionally retrospective, the unashamed absence of modernity receives some splashes of colour from the styles of march 'kings' like Bramwell Coles, Arthur Gullidge, Albert Jakeway and George Marshall.
Estimated dispatch 7-14 working days
