Frank Renton on Brass

Our Track of the Week comes from a young trumpet player who is gradually forging a reputation as an international soloist who we like to think had her first taste of fame as the winner of the BBC Radio 2 Young Brass award way back in 2014. It's Matilda Lloyd and it's delightful!Frank's second track is in his opinion one of the greatest pieces ever written for the brass band, and in 1991 he and the Grimethorpe Colliery Band were to give the first performance of the music as reward ...

In this Frank Renton on Brass free podcast, Frank shares his Track of the Week and a piece of music that conjures up a memory from his life in music.The memory this week is one from the early 1970s when Frank was Band Master of the Gordon Highlanders and failed to convince his commanding officer that he hadn't just conducted a lot of wrong notes with the conclusion that he'd tried to be too clever by half! Frank's Track of the Week is a brilliant band that seemed to come out of now...

For twenty three years I was the writer and presenter of Listen to the Band on BBC Radio 2, an enjoyable and fascinating job, especially after thirty odd years as a member of the Armed Services.Part of the programme was to interview people making news in the band world, and none was more interesting than the composer Nigel Hess who achieved fame as a composer for the theatre, film and television. We start this podcast featuring Nigel Hess' three short ‘pictures’, inspired by several visi...

My Track of the Week this week features a young woman, Matilda Lloyd, whose fortunes I have followed ever since she won the BBC Radio 2 Young Brass Award in 2014, accompanied by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band with me conducting them. The track's just brilliant and she's proving to be a complete trumpet star.My second piece of music this week is also a bit special, certainly to me, not in any high flown emotional or intellectual context, but because of the sheer fun and enjoyment that the...

I never really mastered playing this piano solo by Debussy but when I discovered a wonderfully sensitive arrangement for band I knew it would make a perfect and totally unexpected encore for my concerts with Grimethorpe. In my second selection, The Beatles' music has echoed down the decades and with Liverpool in the centre of things last weekend for Eurovision I’ve included a simply staggering arrangement of Get Back as you’ve never heard it before.For more information on Frank Renton on...

Two contrasting pieces vie for attention this week both of which I love dearly. My Track of the Week reflects the formality of a Royal Coronation as commissioned from William Walton for the Coronation of King George VI in 1937. It absolutely captures the grandeur and ceremony of such an important occasion and I think it's a masterpiece and it's played here by Black Dyke.Our second choice this week is the complete opposite and has always given me great enjoyment, in the form of wonderfull...

Almost 100 years ago George Gershwin was hard at work writing Rhapsody in Blue, as Gershwin later told his biographer, "it was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer.... I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise. And there I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end."It’s been re-scored many times including by Gordon Goodwin for hi...

I’m preparing this edition of our free podcast in the week leading up to the Easter weekend, and my Track of the Week reflects this time of year.It’s a recording by a trumpet and cornet player for whom I and many others have simply run out of complimentary adjectives to describe his playing.So I hope you'll enjoy Philip Cobb excelling in the perfect simplicity of this music by Edward Gregson.In the other half of this podcast I'm playing The Florentiner March, by Julius Fučík, which has ...

Oddly enough both pieces this week share the date of 1967. Although unconnected they make it a very memorable year for me. It was in 1967 year they launched a new lifeboat at Padstow on the North Coast of Cornwall and Malcolm Arnold who was living in Cornwall at the time was asked to write a special march for the occasion, and it's my Track of the Week.It’s also the year that I was in my first year as a Student Bandmaster at the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, and I first h...

I was brought up in Bradford and as I grew into my teens and became ever more interested in music and the arts, I became aware that one of our greatest composers Frederick Delius was also born there.One of the first records I was given was a recording of his music which did two things , it gave me a life long love of the sound of strings which has never left me, and it also fed my interest in his music, encapsulated in his piece La Calinda.A march by John Philip Sousa is a completely differen...

This week I’m featuring a brilliant cornet player, Stephen Cobb, who has never appeared as a player in these podcasts before, with music written especially for him by the American composer Stephen Bulla. I think Tchaikovsky’s ballet music, Swan Lake, is one of the greatest of all musical achievements. It never fails to thrill me and move me all at the same time, which might surprise you, but in this free podcast I'll tell you why.For more information on Frank Renton on Brass just v...

My personal musical choice this week isn’t actually a single piece but more about style and a dedication to perfection, epitomised by one person who through our work together became a friend, but before that was simply somebody who I thought epitomised everything that was good about the brass band, Jim Shepherd.My Track of the Week is by Nigel Clarke, best known as a composer of music for the cinema and some of the most innovative music for the brass band. The soloist is Harmen Vanhoorne,&nbs...

Frank's personal track this week features an unforgettable moment when he discovered the music of Wilfred Heaton and heard it played by his favourite band in the UK at the time, the Enfield Citadel Band of the Salvation Army.His Track of the Week, features trumpet virtuoso Alison Balsom playing Gymnopedie by Erik Satie, accompanied by the Guy Barker orchestra.Definitely two to savour. For more information on Frank Renton on Brass just visit our website at www.frankrentononbrass.co...

We start this episode with Frank's Track of the Week and asking what would Mozart have made of this stunning arrangement of his famous Rondo Alla Turca played by three European cornet superstars.Then, Frank talks about playing for HM Queen Elizabeth II at the Trooping of the Colour and "having spent much of my professional life involved in military music it came to play a big part in my life, especially the playing of marches. After all what would a parade be like without a good band playing ...

In this Frank Renton on Brass free podcast, Frank recalls the first time he knew he wanted to be a trumpet player and his first experience of a full brass section when, the "sheer vibrancy and weight of sound was just overwhelming".We play that first piece, the Overture from Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and in Frank's Track of the Week, we're with Fine Arts Brass at the Carnival of Venice.Two fantastic tracks that we hope you'll enjoy this week.For more information on Frank Renton ...

In this Frank Renton on Brass free podcast, we've brass music of symphonic proportions plus a jazz classic written at about the same time, with memories of Frank’s own recording of it in 1983, rekindled after a chance meeting with the soloist.Last week Frank was in Manchester for the Festival of Brass and recorded a conversation with clarinettist, band master and director of music Paul Murrell, who was also the soloist in our featured recording this week of Artie Shaw's Concerto for Clarinet,...

Is it possible that a brass arrangement of Liszt’s orchestral masterpiece Les Preludes is better than the original, plus this is what happens when you put a world class jazz trumpet player with a world class brass band.My Track of the Week is played by the outstanding trumpeter, Mike Lovatt with the Foden's Band, conducted by Michael Fowles, playing the Rhapsody for Trumpet and Brass Band by Colin Skinner, a piece that has informed and delighted me for years, and one that whilst it make...

Frank takes us back to his earliest conducting days and recalls the impact that recordings of a Shostakovich masterpiece had on him, and in Frank's Track of the Week we hear an award winning performance by the Cory Band from the 2016 Brass in Concert that Frank presented, of music now associated forever with one of the world’s greatest storytellers, Roald Dahl, with themes centred on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Matilda.For more information on Frank Renton on...

In this episode of Frank Renton on Brass I feature Elgar Howarth and Eric Ball. My track of the week celebrates the brilliant trumpet player, composer and conductor Elgar Howarth and my personal musical memory takes us back to 1956 when I made my first and only appearance at the National Brass Band Championships as a cornet player.I'm featuring the Symphonic Suite Festival Music by Eric Ball, and it's just beautiful!For more information on Frank Renton on Brass just visit our website at ...

This is Frank's first free podcast and features Billy May's Big Fat Brass playing The Continental in a 1958 recording, and then we're off to Norway for Frank's Track of the Week from Eikanger-Bjørsvik Musikklag. Enjoy! For more information on Frank Renton on Brass just visit our website at www.frankrentononbrass.com. #brassmusic #brassbands #podcasts #ブラスバンド #bandadiottoni #fanfare