snapshot of score of Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra

Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra

Original 1977, rev. 1985, orchestrated 2018

This started life as Concerto for Trumpet and Brass Band, the cover of which says ‘Trumpet Concerto, Brass Band version’, the intention from the start being to make an orchestral version at some point. Finally, roughly 40 years later, I have got round to completing this major project, which I now regard as my definitive Trumpet Concerto.

The music is substantially the same — the solo part is almost identical — but enhanced in various ways in the standard orchestra with the addition of a drumkit and a bass guitar (full details below). This has allowed me to realise fully some of the ideas, with particular leanings towards jazz and rock, that I could only hint at in the original version (it gets positively prog in the last movement!). The work is in three movements, to be played without a break. The soloist changes to flugelhorn for the central slow movement, which I dedicated in memoriam Duke Ellington, who had recently died at the time of the original composition. Ellington’s tune Mood Indigo weaves in and out of the texture of the first half of this movement, becoming a long, slow lament after the soloist’s big cadenza.

As the work is intended to run continuously, the recording you’re invited to listen to below is a single 27 minute chunk of audio/video, but if you want to go to individual movements, movement II starts at 5:21 and III at 18:29.

I would of course be truly ecstatic if there’s a soloist, conductor, orchestra or other commissioning body out there that would care to perform, and preferably fund this piece…

Score extract (PDF)

Instrumentation

Performances / broadcasts / ‘real’ recordings

Listen to MIDI version (27:08)