A Yorkshire Overture

A Yorkshire Overture was composed in 1991 and commissioned by the York-based music retailer, Banks & Son Ltd.

It was written for a festival, which featured school bands from throughout Yorkshire and Graham Walker conducted the first performance.

The overture opens with a fanfare from the brass under trills from the woodwinds and after this short introduction, a perky tune emerges over bubbling clarinet accompaniment and leads to a legato second subject played by the middle of the band. This also features the bubbling clarinet figure in the upper woodwinds and grows to a climax. A development section follows where fragments of the first subject are thrown from instrument to instrument and this leads to a full-scale recapitulation. A coda follows, featuring some new material and this brings the work to a close.