Gavin Higgins grew up in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, a former coal-mining area where the brass-band tradition still persists. He began his musical training playing a tenor horn in one of those bands, and these groups have remained an important part of his musical makeup as a composer. He’s written extensively for wind and brass groups, but his Proms commission, a 40-minute Concerto Grosso for brass band and orchestra, introduced by the Tredegar Band and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Ryan Bancroft (a former trumpeter himself), is by far the most ambitious of those pieces so far.
Higgins describes the work as a “love letter” to the music that he has known since he was a child, drawing on its cultural legacy and musical style. The five movements of his concerto fall into two continuous spans of music; the first sequence, he says, looks at “the medium’s geographical, industrial and socio-economic roots”, while the second celebrates the music’s “high lyricism and dazzling virtuosity”.
