Happy 40th birthday National Youth Brass Band of Wales! Wales's most exceptional young brass musicians have had access to first-class training and performance opportunities since 1982. Members are drawn from across Wales, through an annual audition process, and approximately 50 musicians are assembled to form a double-sized band. We’re thrilled that our relationship with Philip Harper, conductor of the World-famous Cory Brass Band, continues this year.

NYBBW celebrate this milestone with a performance of two of the genre’s most iconic pieces nestled in a broad programme of brass brand repertoire and a new commission by Ian Stephens. Percy Fletcher’s landmark of musical sophistication and expression, An Epic Symphony, was used as the test piece for the Championship Section of the National Championships of 1926 (he composed the first original test-piece for brass band in 1913). In tribute to those early test-pieces and their composers is NYBWW Founder Conductor Edward Gregson’s Of Distant Memories. It pays homage to the musical languages, styles and forms used by early test composers like Percy Fletcher, in one continuous movement until the triumphant coda. 

Commissioned by NYAW and Philip Harper in 2020, Ian Stephens’s Colston Falls was inspired by one of the most enduring scenes of lockdown: the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol. The piece is framed by a tutti morse code rendition of the date of the protest, 07/06/2020, and features a chant of “bring it down, bring it down” on flugel, horns, baritones and timpani. 

National Youth Brass Band of Wales
Conductor Philip Harper 
Trombone Isobel Daws

Edward Gregson Fanfare for a New Era
Philip Sparke Orient Express
Gordon Langford Rhapsody for Trombone
Ian Stephens Colston Falls (World Premiere)
Percy Fletcher An Epic Symphony
Liz Lane Diamond Fanfare
Edward Gregson Of Distant Memories
Ray Steadman-Allen Walk With Me
Arthur Pryor Blue Bells of Scotland
Stijn Aertgeerts Hope
J.J. Richards, arr. Harper La Suerte de Los Tontos

Tickets £12 (under-26s £5, concessions available)
Pontio Box Office
www.pontio.co.uk / 01248 382828