The London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble is Britain’s longest-established brass group. It started life in 1963 when three Royal College of Music trombone students got together with a retired naval commander, David Biddulph, with the objective of rehabilitating the then neglected brass music of Giovanni Gabrieli. Very soon it was in demand for educational concerts, later changing into a standard brass quintet for the five-year run of the West End and Broadway musical, Canterbury Tales. A second aim became augmentation of the brass chamber music repertoire by asking contemporary composers for new works. The Ensemble can now justifiably claim success in both aims. The music of Renaissance Venice is known and loved by a huge public, and the Ensemble has had major compositions from composers as diverse as Joán Guinjoán, Alun Hoddinott, Jean Langlais, Xavier Montsalvatge, Paul Patterson, Naresh Sohal and Hugh Wood.

The London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble has appeared in thirty-six countries on five continents, from Tromsø to Toronto and from Brasilia to Beijing. With the pioneering Royal Brass Music of King James I, made as long ago as 1965, it became one of the first groups to put brass music on record. Well over a dozen recordings have followed, including four for Hyperion. The latest of these, Antique Brasses, is of art music from the 1820’s and 1830’s, played by the world’s greatest period brass virtuosi, on the brass instruments of that era: keyed bugles, natural horns and trumpets, slide trumpet, trombones and ophicleides. It marks the start of the Antique Brasses Project in which it is hoped to be able to introduce these experts to brass players both young and old, from community to conservatoire standard, involving them in recreating original brass music from the early nineteenth century—from the very dawn of the era of technological improvement that led to the chromaticisation of all the members of the brass family. The Project’s advisers are Sir Andrew Davis, Anthony Halstead, Michael Rose, Crispian Steele-Perkins, Sir Roger Norrington and James Watson.