(BTS article 2023.) Dan Jenkins takes a light-hearted look at the role of Second Trombone.      In June 2021, the excellent Radio 3 programme The Listening Service did a show…

Majdanek, pronounced Mydanek, is the concentration camp on the very outskirts of Lublin, in east Poland. The fact that it’s so near a city makes it unique, all the other…

     This is a self-explanation, a discovery I’ve made in the last few years, and so is, there’s no getting away from it, of little general concern. It has its…

A Aerobics.  Chocolate pens. Arcadia.  Idyllic area of slot machines. Alistair.  Someone on the A-list. Aggregate.  Farming scandal. Andante.  Wife of the poet. Anagram.  Like a strippergram but just a…

Or rather not just from the stage, but a view of the whole day, as a performer involved from the rehearsal in the morning right through to Auld Lang Syne. …

A few carols, Xmas 2020.                              By March 2020, Covid had well and truly reached Britain and figures were shooting up to a frightening degree every single day.…

Letter following a Times review of a Philharmonia concert, Bolero was part of the programme. Oh dear, yet another music reviewer who thinks that the conductor is responsible for the…

The current BBCSO Trombone Section sprang into being on April 2nd, 2011, when Rob O’Neill joined us to fill our Bass Trombone vacancy.  In those days we were a gang…

Article on Composition for the BTS, 2018? In 1972, the BBC held an Open Competition to write the theme tune for the forthcoming Winter Olympics. Age 5, I sent, in…

Having read Matt Gee’s excellent article on Audition Technique in the BTS summer issue, I thought I’d have a stab at writing a few words about the next stage: Trials.…