BBC Radio 3: Brass Banding
By Olivia Swift
on Tue Jun 17 2025
If you’re new to brass band music, set aside any previous preconceptions – oh yes, there will always be the covers of our favourite film soundtracks or the Theme from ‘Shaft’ if you’re lucky – and hopefully bands playing in local markets forevermore, however, there is something about this world of sound that is incredibly addictive.
Over 10 weeks, musician Hannah Peel plays the finest brass band music from the most loved pieces to the newest compositions, fresh off the page. Passionate, talented and competitive; Brass banding is a uniquely rich and rewarding community.
Working with the presenter Hannah Peel has been a dream. Hannah is perhaps best known for her gorgeous ambient synth music and scores for TV and film. But her musical journey started when she moved from Northern Ireland to Barnsley in Yorkshire at age 8. There she was handed a trombone and welcomed into a musical community where she learnt to perform, to read music and to work together as a team to achieve great things.
In researching this programme we discovered that brass banding, which formed in the 19th Century during Britain’s Industrial Age, has spread across the globe. Each episode Hannah drops a pin into a different location on our ‘Map of Banding’, exploring some of the lesser known locations where banding is thriving like Norway, Switzerland, USA and Japan.
And we couldn’t make a brass band series without hearing from the community themselves. So in each episode we drop into a band room to invite players, conductors, band leaders and the community to tell us what they do and recommend a piece.
Broadcast from 27th April to 29th June 2025
Listen on BBC Sound, each episode is available for 30 days after broadcast.