Connotations was commissioned for the 1977 National Brass Band Championship finals, held in the Royal Albert Hall, London (the winner, incidentally, of that particular competition was the famous Black Dyke Mills Band).

At the age of 32 Gregson was the youngest composer to have received the honour of such a commission. It came at the end of a productive five years writing for the brass band publisher R Smith. Some of those works – The Plantagenets, Essay and Patterns for example, with their di...