Today’s pro­gramme — Wednes­day 20th Octo­ber — focus­es on brass instru­ments, with gen­res that range from Ear­ly Music to con­tem­po­rary pieces. The pro­gramme is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of the late Alan Hawkshaw.

Thus the gen­res range from ancient and ear­ly music, through Baroque and clas­si­cal, to Vic­to­ri­an brass bands, to rag­time, trad jazz, a touch of big band, right up to mod­ern works includ­ing a mar­vel­lous suite of pieces for wind band inspired by the works of Shakespeare.

This will all lead to some remark­able jux­ta­po­si­tions — and a few surprises.

In addi­tion, don’t miss the lat­est install­ment of “Where’ve You Been?”, which this time vis­its Snowy Riv­er Hal­loween and Pine Val­ley Haunt­ed Cav­erns: Noon and 4pm Pacif­ic, 8pm and mid­night UK time, and Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity, every 4 hours from 4am Pacific.

Today’s pro­gramme is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Alan Hawk­shaw, and we start today’s pro­gramme with In The Clouds, from the Alan Hawkshaw/Brian Ben­nett album Full Cir­cle, released in 2018.

From Wikipedia: William Alan Hawk­shaw BEM (27 March 1937 – 16 Octo­ber 2021) was a British com­pos­er and per­former, par­tic­u­lar­ly of library music used as themes for movies and tele­vi­sion pro­grams. Hawk­shaw worked exten­sive­ly for the KPM pro­duc­tion music com­pa­ny in the 1950s to the 1970s, com­pos­ing and record­ing many tracks that have been used exten­sive­ly in film and TV. He was the com­pos­er of a num­ber of theme tunes includ­ing Grange Hill (orig­i­nal­ly library music record­ed in Munich known as “Chick­en Man”) and Count­down. In addi­tion, he was an arranger and pianist, and in the Unit­ed States with the stu­dio group Love De-Luxe scored a num­ber 1 sin­gle on the Bill­board Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart with “Here Comes That Sound Again” in 1979. His song “Char­lie” is heard on Just for Laughs Gags.

 Head­er image: Pho­tographed by and copy­right of © David Cor­by (User:Miskatonic, uploader) 2006, via Wiki­me­dia Commons