Virtual Venue
Waltz and Skedaddle
Princip to Poppies
Bach in Barbados
Señoras
The Long and the Short
Return of the Polar Express
Icology
Dance Suite
Blue Forest
Tail-enders.
6/8, The Sequel
- Earth
- Air
- Water
- Fire
The Gypsies
Trombone Concerto
Version 2 is the same, but with a fairly limp drum kit. It needs more punch. Where’s Animal when you need him.
6. Above the Clouds

On the Band-Stand

Riffem and Blues
Expanding forces further, to 12 trombones, this piece has made it to performance, by the students of Trinity College, the Royal College, and the trombones of RAF Northolt so far. I’d had the riff for ages and knew roughly what I was going to do with it. The piece starts with a musical “Hello” on mixed mutes, then the riff starts in the distance and builds up around it, then it skips a beat and falls into a big blues, in the manner of Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo a la Turk. The riff returns and fades, finally ending with the opening reversed, now as a musical “Goodbye”. There’s a piece for brass band called Jamie’s Patrol, about an American Civil War band, which starts with the bugles and drums over the hill, approaching until the full cavalry sweeps past, then strides off into the distance again. Very atmospheric, and obviously an influence on Riffem and Blues. It is published by Roger Harvey at Brass Works.
It would help to describe this piece if I gave one (!) of its original titles, which was Fanfare, Theme, Ghosts and Hoedown. This is a melange of a piece, in those implied moods, written as a thankyou to Duncan Wilson and Kidlington Concert Brass for performing Sketches of Shetland, which they did brilliantly. When I couldn’t settle on a title for the melange, I wondered if, when KCB played it, we should have a sort of raffle, where members of the audience could suggest a title, based on what they’d just heard. It was quite an up-and-down summer that year.
Written for a performance at the International Trombone Festival in 2006, by, and for Katy Price and Christian Jones, shortly before they got married. Based on their initials, and the imminent wedding, the theme takes its cue from the song about Casey Jones, the American pioneer. Here are Christian and Ian Bousfield playing it at the end of a recital at the Arctic Trombone Festival in 2016.
Here’s the phenomenal Christian Jones premiering my only piece of Serialism, in September 2017, in Peel Hall at the University of Salford. The piece was written for Christian, and attempts to make accessible music from a strict tone row of twelve notes. There are distinct sections of different moods, derived and developed from small parts of the tone row. A martial section, a mad waltz, hints of West Side Story and a reflective passage are inspired by the row, which is stated at the beginning and returns ate the end, joining up the various strands explored during the piece. Incidentally, this recording will never happen again, as I adjusted the piece after it, and the published Final Version (by Warwick Music) is shorter than this one. Thank you Christian for this magnificent performance, and therefore leading me to see me how the piece should finally go!