This work was commissioned by Boosey & Hawkes Band Festivals (with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain) for the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain, held at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 7th October 1984.

Dances and Arias is in one continuous movement, but as the title suggests is a series of alternating fast and slow sections as follows: Dance – Aria I – Dance (scherzo) – Aria II – Dance. The opening dance is energetic and introduces a four-note motif (on trombones) which is the basis for much of the melodic material in the …

Connotations was commissioned for the 1977 National Brass Band Championship finals, held in the Royal Albert Hall, London (the winner, incidentally, of that particular competition was the famous Black Dyke Mills Band).

At the age of 32 Gregson was the youngest composer to have received the honour of such a commission.  It came at the end of a productive five years writing for the brass band publisher R Smith.  Some of those works – The Plantagenets, Essay and Patterns for example, with their direct and tuneful style, have remained popular with brass bands the world over.

For Gregson, these were …

This work was commissioned by the Besses o’ th’ Barn Band with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain. It was written for, and is dedicated to, John Fletcher, who gave the first performance in Middleton Civic Hall, near Manchester, on 24 April, 1976, with Besses o’ th’ Barn Band conducted by the composer. Another interesting feature about the première was that it was recorded by BBC Television for an Omnibus programme with André Previn as presenter. The concerto exists in three versions: with brass band (1976), orchestra (1978) and wind band (1984).

The concerto is in three …