Royal Artillery Band

This 2 CD set presents 34 of John Philip Sousa’s best-loved marches, including The Washington Post which, in the early 1890s, sparked a huge world-wide dance-craze, The Liberty Bell, used as the signature tune for the BBC comedy Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and The Stars and Stripes Forever, the official national march of the United States.

Known affectionately as ‘The March King’, Sousa personified turn-of-the-century America, the comparative innocence and brash energy of a still new nation.

Universally acknowleged as the best of the genre, his marches are notable for their vigorous melodic line and unrelenting driving effect, combined with innovative use of instrumentation and tonal color.

John Philip Sousa personified the comparative innocence and brash energy of America around the turn of the 20th Century.

Alongside the march that made him famous and later sparked a world-wide dance craze, The Washington Post, this disc includes excerpts from one of the earliest musicals to achieve Broadway success, El Capitan.

With its origins reaching as far back as 1557, The Royal Artillery Band is one of the largest symphonic wind bands in the British Army.

Keith Brion is a specialist in Sousa’s period style and has published many performing editions of The March King’s music.

A great selection of marches and other music associated with this historic regiment Recorded in the Edwardian splendour of Woolwich Town Hall Contains music for The Musical Drive to accompany the Kings Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery. The Royal Artillery is one of the oldest regiments in Great Britain and serve wherever the British Army happen to be. They have an exceptional musical tradition and more many years were renowned for having a full-sized symphony orchestra (now a sadly reduced group) in addition to their military band. During Victorian times their Bandmaster was Cavalière Ladislao Zavertal, a Bohemian, who was a pupil of Dvorak, who actually visited the Band at Woolwich.

This CD contains Zavertal’s dramatic Queen Victoria Grand March, which had lain for many years in the British Library. As well as containing many marches by former Directors of Music, there is a good selection of music used for all kinds of Royal Artillery occasions, including the exhilarating Musical Drive, played to accompany the King’s Troop while giving their thrilling riding displays with horses, cannons and ammunition limbers. This CD has real variety and shows off the Band at its very best.

Grand music for coronations, for ceremonial occasions, for matters of state and for formal dancing brought together in this special album. 400 years of quintessentially British music, from Matthew Locke to Eric Coates, centred around the peerless style of Sir Edward Elgar, whose 'Pomp & Circumstance' marches are familiar to us all.

John Philip Sousa, known affectionately as “The March King”, personified turn-of-the-century America, the comparative innocence and brash energy of a still new nation. His ever-touring band represented America across the globe and brought music to hundreds of American towns.

This Naxos series of recordings aims to record Sousa’s complete works for wind band, including the 136 marches and numerous other scores.

This seventh disc in the series features the grand Presidential Polonaise, the Intaglio Waltzes (modelled on Johann Strauss’s famous examples), and the triumphant Golden Jubilee March in which Sousa imagined “the world passing in review”.