This work was commissioned in 1970 for a brass band championship sponsored by WD and HO Wills, whose slogan was The Pacemakers. The title was added after the work was finished and has nothing to do with the content or character of the piece which, as Paul Hindmarsh remarks, is ‘arguably the most satisfying in purely musical terms of all of Gregson’s early compositions for band’.

The Overture is cast in a sonata form exposition, with a slow central section, giving the opportunity for expressive cornet and euphonium solos. The final section begins with a strict fugal exposition which …

The suite Voices of Youth is one of Gregson’s very earliest brass band scores, written while he was still a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. It marked the start of a series of pieces which appeared under the R Smith imprint (one of the oldest brass band publishers in the UK) and which effectively made his name. Voices of Youth was commissioned by the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain and was premiered by them under the baton of Geoffrey Brand. It was surely no coincidence that he was also the inspiration behind Gregson’s R …