The word Bombazine is derived from the obsolete French word Bombasin. Largely made in the Norwich area, Bombazine is a twilled fabric made of silk used mainly in dress making and popular in England in the reign of Elizabeth I.
The word Bombazine is derived from the obsolete French word Bombasin. Largely made in the Norwich area, Bombazine is a twilled fabric made of silk used mainly in dress making and popular in England in the reign of Elizabeth I. The image and feel of warm, smooth, opulent silk is aptly suited to a solo feature for tuba. Wing Commander Duncan Stubbs and the RAF Music Service commissioned Blue Bombazine for solo tuba and brass in 2014, for Senior Aircraftman Jonathan Gawn and the RAF Central Band. It was first performed at The Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, on the 11th April 2015 at the British Festival of Wind Bands. The music is written in the jazz idiom with a testing solo part. It is available with brass band accompaniment or brass dectet. There is also a “recital” version available for tuba and piano.
The son of a Welsh miner, Terry Johns is a french horn player with a distinguished career as a member of the Royal Philharmonic and the London Symphony orchestras, the Barry Tuckwell horn quartet, the Alan Civil horn quartet, and the Jack Brymer wind soloists. He played with many jazz greats, including Tubby Hayes, Kenny Wheeler, Stan Getz, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, and John Dankworth. He is also a composer of music for the studio, television. He has written music for the RPO and LSO brass and he composed the theme and incidental music for Harlech TV’s “The Pretenders”. For this he recruited players from the ranks of the RPO, and the LSO, for the studio orchestra led by Sidney Sax, and conducted the sessions himself. In 1984 the actor Robert Hardy while arranging the memorial service for Richard Burton at the church of St Martin in the fields, invited Terry to arrange the final hymn (Battle Hymn of the republic) for the Rhos Cwm Tawe male voice choir and to compose an obbligato solo trumpet part for Maurice Murphy. The music was completed in a sleeper compartment between Edinburgh and London just hours before the service, with the soloist proof-reading from the top bunk! Terry has recently published the first part of his autobiographical “Letters from Lines and Spaces”. The second part is to be published in 2013.
