About Kevin Riley
Trombonist, bandmaster, arranger and composer. Here is how a recorder at school turned into a catalogue of music played around the world.
How it started
Recorder, trumpet, trombone, then the Army
I began the way most musicians do, on the recorder. That led to the trumpet and then the trombone, and at fifteen I joined the Army as a trombone player.
I came up through the junior ranks and on to Kneller Hall in London, where I studied trombone with William Teskey, principal trombone at Covent Garden, and Dennis Bayton of the Taverners Big Band. I also studied theory and composition with R. G. Swift, and picked up a curiosity about every other wind and brass instrument in the building.
Where the writing began
Nine years as solo trombone
In 1973 I joined the band of The Queen's Royal Irish Hussars and was their solo trombone for nine years. That is where I started to arrange and compose. My first piece to be broadcast, an arrangement of the theme from The Godfather, went out on German national radio while I was with the band.
I also kept working on my playing, with lessons from Dennis Wise, principal trombone of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
Writing for real bands
I left the Army in 1981 and spent years depping in theatre pits along the south coast, and playing in big bands, jazz bands, brass ensembles, orchestras, German bands and even recorder consorts.
Today I am musical director of The Allegro Wind Band and Andover Light Orchestra, I teach at Thorngrove School, and I write and arrange for all of them. That is the test every piece here has to pass: does it work for the players in front of me?
My music has been played well beyond Hampshire. The Octava Chamber Orchestra in Seattle has performed my Rondo for Strings and Partita for Solo Violin, I have twice been a featured composer at the Hastings International Composers Festival, and my music has been published by Safe Music, Kistner and Siegel and Music for Brass. Copies have gone to bands in the USA, Mexico, Canada and China.
Play something of mine
Order a printed set from the shop, or find my arrangements on the big publishers.