Duration: 5:30
Recorded by Grimethorpe Colliery Band, conductor Jack Stamp on the CD 'Postcards from Grimethorpe'
'very moving and rather beautiful' - Edward Gregson, by email
'...a master class by Liz Lane in how to write beautifully sustained lyrical writing for brass band. The perfect tension between functional harmony and diatonic dissonance to create colour as tension. What a beautiful piece.' - Mike Sheppard, Facebook
'Fantastic piece' - Kirsty Abbotts, Facebook
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Beyond the Light is written as a tribute to Bramwell Tovey and a thank you for his continuing inspirational legacy. I worked with him in 2018 when he conducted the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain in two performances of my Tide and Time at Wells Cathedral and Cheltenham Town Hall, following the premiere by Foden’s Band with Michael Fowles at the RNCM Brass Band Festival earlier that year.
Tide and Time was inspired by artists in my family and after a rehearsal Bram admired, and took a photo of, an illustration created for me by my Grandfather, G. H. Wooller, a commercial artist, with reflective words by my great-grandfather, H. Wooller, a painter and author, on music ‘beyond the physical and emotional’.
Tide and Time’s web presence has since led to further discoveries of family artwork, including a collection of designs by my grandfather for the ocean liner RMS Empress of Britain (1930) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, bought from Sotheby’s in 1984, with a theme of light. One of these drawings is featured on the title pages of the score by kind permission of the V&A.
The music recalls a motif from Tide and Time, intertwined with two new melodic features emerging one from the other. Drawing the soundscape together is a setting of my great-grandfather’s words, admired in 2018 by Bramwell Tovey.
Liz Lane, December 2022
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Written in memory of Bramwell Tovey for the 2023 Royal Northern College of Music Brass Band Festival, and premiered by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, conductor Ben Palmer, 28 January 2023.
Front cover photo: Interior sketch for the ‘Empress of Britain’,1945, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Reproduced by kind permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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Instrumentation
Eb Soprano Cornet
Bb Solo Cornet
Bb Repiano Cornet
Bb Cornet 2
Bb Cornet 3
Bb Flugelhorn
Eb Solo Tenor Horn
Eb Tenor Horn 1
Eb Tenor Horn 2
Bb Baritone 1
Bb Baritone 2
Bb Trombone 1
Bb Trombone 2
Bass Trombone
Bb Euphonium
Eb Bass
Bb Bass
Percussion 1: Timpani, Medium and Large Suspended Cymbal, Medium Triangle, Cymbals
Percussion 2: Vibraphone, Piano (optional) or Small Triangle
Percussion 3: Glockenspiel, Tubular Bells
Percussion 4: Tubular Bells, Vibraphone