Conspirators Overture

£57.00

Composer: Andrew Duncan

Conspirators Overture was written for Katrina Marzella-Wheeler and the Cooperation Band for their winning programme played at the 2025 Brass in Concert competition at the Glass House in Gateshead in England.

The piece describes a meeting in a café in Paris in 1912 between three very influential Russians. The composer Igor Stravinsky, the dancer Vaslav Nijinsk and the impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

Together they conspired about how Stravinsky’s new Ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The rite of Spring) was going to disrupt what was then a very conservative, classical music scene in Paris. Stravinsky’s music would forever change the way harmonies and rhythms are used in classical and jazz music.

Starvinsky’s full name is Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. The piece uses the morse code rhythm for IFS, which is Stravinsky’s initials as a pulsating 11/8 rhythm which is the foundation of the overture. The opening notes from the Rite of Spring, played by a solo bassoon, are also quoted in the piece in a jazz waltz setting and in a short fugue towards the end of the piece.

Suitable for Championship or First Section Bands.

Composer: Andrew Duncan

Conspirators Overture was written for Katrina Marzella-Wheeler and the Cooperation Band for their winning programme played at the 2025 Brass in Concert competition at the Glass House in Gateshead in England.

The piece describes a meeting in a café in Paris in 1912 between three very influential Russians. The composer Igor Stravinsky, the dancer Vaslav Nijinsk and the impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

Together they conspired about how Stravinsky’s new Ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The rite of Spring) was going to disrupt what was then a very conservative, classical music scene in Paris. Stravinsky’s music would forever change the way harmonies and rhythms are used in classical and jazz music.

Starvinsky’s full name is Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. The piece uses the morse code rhythm for IFS, which is Stravinsky’s initials as a pulsating 11/8 rhythm which is the foundation of the overture. The opening notes from the Rite of Spring, played by a solo bassoon, are also quoted in the piece in a jazz waltz setting and in a short fugue towards the end of the piece.

Suitable for Championship or First Section Bands.