
5 minute read
THE DREAMERS
BY ROBIN HAIGH
In June of this year, my Quadruple Concerto for four trombone soloists and 16 players, THE DREAMERS, received its première at the Aldeburgh Festival. It was performed by Slide Action Trombone Quartet, the Britten Pears Contemporary Ensemble, and conductor Jonathan Berman.
How does a piece like this come about? A concerto for four trombones is clearly very unusual, a far cry from the dozens of concerti for piano, violin or cello being written every year. Even concerti for a single trombone are uncommon, though this is something that seems to be changing: notable recent works for trombone and orchestra by Gavin Higgins, Dani Howard, Alex Paxton and James MacMillan have, in my opinion, opened many composers’ eyes to the virtuosic possibilities of the instrument. I like to consider my own piece as part of a recent “trombonnaisance” – a renaissance for the trombone in British contemporary classical music.
As part of my role as a 2021/22 Britten Pears Young Artist, I was given the flexibility to develop any kind of commission I wanted for the Aldeburgh Festival, an extremely luxurious situation. My greatest interests as a composer have always been in large ensembles and orchestras, and a big priority for me right now is to be writing more substantial pieces, so a work of twenty minutes seemed appropriate for the time I would need to complete it. I was already enamoured with the sound of multiple trombones, from pieces like Georg-Friedrich Haas’ highly microtonal Octet. Meeting Slide Action at Snape Maltings in summer 2021 sealed the deal – their enthusiasm for new repertoire, for doing new things and pushing at musical boundaries brought everything together for me, and the idea for a Quadruple Concerto quickly crystallised.
The trombone is a particularly special instrument for me, as it was the first instrument I learned as a child. I was taught by former Royal Philharmonic Orchestra trombonist John Sibley through my local music service in Newham, East London, though I was far from a perfect student; while I appreciated playing in ensembles, I found that practising really wasn’t for me. I remember I never really learned the names of the notes aside from B flat and F, just what they looked like on the staff and where that meant I should put the slide. And I would play half by ear, sliding up or down a semitone when I started a note in the wrong position. I remember in the youth orchestra, I would play notes in the wrong octave just to make it easier or more fun to play; perhaps an early sign of my future as a composer, given the way I saw the music as something inherently malleable and changeable, rather than set in stone. I managed to get to Grade 6 before accepting that being a trombonist wasn’t what fate had in store for me, but the trombone remained somehow a part of my musical identity, which is one of the things that made the idea of a concerto so appealing.
THE DREAMERS is a piece in five movements of around four minutes each, all in very distinctive moods. To demonstrate some of the thinking that went into the piece, I will go into some detail about the music.
The first melodic material we hear in the piece is this simple four note phrase doubled in the piccolo and celesta – a very innocent melody, almost ironic or comical in the context of a piece of contemporary classical music.

Very much of the music in the piece derives from this simple phrase – the idea of four ascending pitches is integral to the rest of the work. For example, when the trombones enter shortly afterward, they are playing a fast-ascending arpeggio figure, intended to show their virtuosity right off the bat.
The second movement is much more subdued, instead focusing on the sound of a slowed down vibrato, though still with a heavy emphasis on ascending four note melodies. I thought the trombone would be the perfect instrument to perform this type of technique given the control of the slide, and this type of playing was layered up across all of the trombones as well as the rest of the ensemble to create a kind of warped, hazy, woozy sound.
Following a third movement that builds on the ideas of the first and second, the fourth provides a considerable contrast, as a chorale for just the four soloists. This includes my own approach to a technique called Just Intonation, whereby the pitches of chords are adjusted to adhere to the harmonic series rather than the 12 equal pitches found on a piano. I wanted a brief moment of purity and simplicity to stand out against the bombast and rhythmic urgency of the other movements. This moment of relief is interrupted by a violent outburst from the ensemble, signaling the beginning of the final movement. This type of sound, marked “FFF foghorn” for the players, was directly inspired by modern approaches to music in blockbuster films and their trailers.
The piece ends with the soloists playing a final, decisive iteration of the melody that began the piece, ending with an enormous tutti.
This piece represented an enormous step for my own work as a composer, and it was an honour to be able to work alongside Slide Action, who contributed a lot of their expertise to the piece, helping me to fine-tune several passages in the final stages of the composition. I look forward to writing even more music for trombones and other brass instruments, and very much hope for further performances of THE DREAMERS, both in its original incarnation, and in its recently completed version for soloists and full orchestra.
To learn more about Robin Haigh visit his website, where sheet music for THE DREAMERS is available for purchase. The fourth movement CHORALE is also available as a standalone work. ◆



