Simon Wills FGSM BA ARCM

Simon Wills FGSM BA ARCM

Department of Early Music Studies: Wind, Brass & Percussion - Sackbutt and Trombone,
Department of Music Studies: Professorial Staff,
Department of Performance and Communication Skills: Teaching Skills,
Department of Wind, Brass & Percussion: Early Music - Sackbutt and trombone,
Department of Wind, Brass & Percussion: Trombone,
Department of Wind, Brass and Percussion: Early Music: Sackbutt and trombone,
Department of Wind, Brass and Percussion: Trombone

Simon Wills originally wanted to be a lute player, but was deflected to the trombone by a serious hand injury. After university he was principal trombonist of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, then for many years a member of the London Symphony Orchestra. He was simultaneously principal trombonist of The Chamber Orchestra of Europe, a position he held for 14 years until 1997. His time is now divided between playing and composition. He works with all London's orchestras, and travels widely as a soloist; he has recently broadcast the Haydn concerto for Sudwestrundfunk and the Berio Sequenza for Radio 3. In June 2004 he gave the first performance and broadcast of Judas Mercator, a piece composed for him by Peter Maxwell Davies and in 2005 has solo appearances in Italy, Germany, Estonia and the UK. He has a particularly close relationship with the Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble in Freiburg, both as player and composer, and his work in early music includes the Freiburger Barockorchester and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has an international career as a chamber musician and his activities in this field are very eclectic: in 2003 he was a clockwork winder for the 100 metronomes in Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique at Sydney Opera House.

His work as a composer is wide ranging and includes a trombone concerto written for Christian Lindberg, two string quartets, several orchestral pieces and a large amount of music for TV and film, most recently a 90-minute score for One Big Adventure on the BBC. He is heavily involved in music theatre. Jiggery Pokery, a modern Jonsonian Masque was a succes de scandale at its premiere in London in 1998, and A Day Close to Summer, commissioned by the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2003 provoked widespread debate in the German press. In 2004 his 'opera without an orchestra', Die Brück am Tay was a considerable critical and popular success on the continent. This dramatic setting of Theodor Fontane's poem, commissioned by the Feldkirch Festival in Austria, has toured and been broadcast twice. The same week as the premiere of Brück am Tay, Moro Lasso for unseen countertenor and ensemble was well received at its premiere in the Cheltenham International Festival. 2004 also saw a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic of his Prelude and Fugue about Quem Pastores Laudavere. In the autumn of 2005 his latest large-scale work, Symphony for Strings, will tour South America with dozen performances in Rio di Jameiro, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Sao Paolo and Montevideo. He is now working on his first full-length opera, Verloc, a story of terrorism to a libretto of his own, which he will direct in a run of performances at the Vienna Schauspielhaus in May 2006 and also at the Feldkirch Festival.

He has taught at GSMD since 1986. As well as being professor of trombone and a chamber music coach, he teaches wind arranging and academic subjects. He was elected FGSM in 2001.