Gareth Wood ( Cilfynydd near Pontypridd, Wales, 1950 ) is a Welsh composer , music educator and conductor. He studied composition and double bass at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1972 he became a member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and work with this orchestra familiar with the most important music festivals and with great conductors, such as Leopold Stokowski, Rudolf Kempe, Karl Böhm, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, and others. From 1991 to 1994 he was chairman of the board of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 1975 he became known as a composer with the overture Tombstone - Arizona, which was performed at London's Royal Albert Hall during the National Brass Band Festival. It followed compulsory works for the Butlins Youth Band Contest in 1977 and the New Zealand Brass Band Championships in 1980 as well as for the European Championships in 1992. In Ipswich his overture Suffolk Punch was performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1981.

Here are just some of the compositions from the pen of Gareth Wood, with a number of them being played on this show over the years. Some of them will be familiar to many of our listeners: 

• 1975 Tombstone - Arizona, for brass band
• 1992 Five Blooms in a Welch Garden, for brass band (compulsory work at the 1992 European Brass Band Championships in Cardiff )
• 1999 Concerto, for trombone and brass band
• 2001 Quintet for brass, for brass quintet and brass band
• 2006 Concerto, for tenor horn and brass band
• Coliseum, for brass band
• Concertino, for horn and brass band
• Concerto, for harp and brass band
• Concerto, for trumpet and brass band
• Concerto, for tuba and brass band
• Culloden Moor, for brass band
• Hinemoa, for brass band
• Introduction and Allegro, for brass band
• Japanese Slumber Song, for brass band
• Margam stones, for brass band
• Nocturnal, for brass band
• Nocturne, for flugelhorn (flugelhorn) and brass band
• Salome, rhapsody for brass band
• Songs Radiant Fair, for brass band
• Sosban Fach, for brass band
• The Margam Stones, for brass band
• This Happy Island, for brass band
• 2009 Mist of the Forest 

On this week's show we are featuring Mist of the Forest played by the Cory Band in 2009. 

The inspiration for this work is a part of South Wales where the composer spent his childhood. The Afan Forest Park is an old mining area that has been extensively reclaimed and transformed through one of the earliest reclamation schemes in Wales. The forest is picturesque all year round, but is particularly beautiful at dawn in the summer when the moisture of the sea in Swansea Bay and the heat from the golden sun combines to create a unique mist.

The music seeks to capture the undulating effects of the changing density of the mist as the sun gradually burns away the moisture.Mist of the Forest also forms the penultimate movement of the composer's extended work for brass band, Brass Triumphant - a work composed for the Cory Band during their 125th anniversary year of 2009.  

Enjoy the show....