The Offical Edward Gregson Web Site

Edward Gregson

Edward Gregson (born 1945) is one of Britain's most respected composers, whose music has been performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. He studied composition (with Alan Bush) and piano at the Royal Academy of Music from 1963-7, winning five prizes for composition. He received early success with his Brass Quintet, which was broadcast and recorded (by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and the Hallé Brass Consort). Since then he has written orchestral, chamber, instrumental and choral music, as well as music for the theatre, film and television.

Edward Gregson is Principal of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, a post he has held since 1996. Before that he had an academic career in music, mainly at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he eventually became Professor of Music in 1994. He is also Chairman of Conservatoires UK and sits on the Boards of the Performing Right Society, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, and Chethams School of Music. Read more>>>

Work of the Day for Friday 4th July, 2008

Chalk Farm No. 2 (Concert March)

Like so many of the best composers for brass band - Eric Ball, Wilfred Heaton, Elgar Howarth and Robert Simpson - Edward Gregson's youthful talents came to the fore in the Salvation Army. In 1975 Gregson was commissioned by the Chalk Farm Band of the Salvation Army to write a march for the centenary of the birth of the band's most long-serving bandmaster Alfred W Punchard, who conducted the band from 1894 to 1944. In 1909 the Salvation Army published a march called Chalk Farm featuring the old Army chorus 'March on, we shall win the day'.

Gregson uses the same tune in his Chalk Farm No. 2 march, but this is a symphonic march clearly to be played sitting down. He includes irregular bars of 5 and 7 beats as well as a tongue-in-cheek treatment of th etuen, complete with bongos (in the march) and bi-tonality (in the trio). Chalk Farm No. 2 imaginatively composed. Gregson's own main theme 'fits' the chorus as a counter-subject. The playful irreverence of the style has more in common with Wilfred Heaton's Praise or Glory', glory than the conventional Salvation Army March.