Edward Gregson’s previously unpublished piece, Birthday Prelude for Brass Band, composed in 1982 to mark the 80th birthday of Harry Mortimer,  and performed again in 2015 at the North American Brass Band Championships to celebrate the 80th birthday of Gregson’s brother, Bram, has now been published by Morthanveld Publishing, with a dedication to Harry and Bram.

Of the piece,  Gregson recalls:

I was aware of course of the Stravinsky Greetings Prelude, also based on Happy Birthday … I wanted mine to be celebratory but without being too obvious in quoting the whole tune; thus it uses various phrases of the tune in a compositionally unifying manner.  Let’s face it, it’s a pretty simple tune, and to mess about with it too much would have been presumptuous.

Birthday Prelude is available at www.morthanveld.com