John Wallace (1949-2026)

The Scottish trumpeter and composer John Wallace has died at the age of 76.

Wallace was born and brought up in the Scottish working-class brass banding tradition - inheriting a cornet from a father who had played for nearly seven decades in the band of Glenrothes’ Tullis Russell Paper Mill, and becoming the fourth generation of his family to pursue brass banding.

Wallace studied at King’s College Cambridge under, among others, David Willcocks, and later focused on composition at the Royal Academy of Music and York University. His performing career (now fully transitioned over from the cornet to the trumpet) continued in parallel with these studies, and indeed by his late twenties Wallace had come to the conclusion that the trumpet, not composing, would have to be what put food on the table. Posts with the Royal Philharmonic, The Philharmonia Orchestra and the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble would follow.

For many people, Wallace is best known for providing the trumpet obbligato to Kiri Te Kanawa’s performance of Let the bright Seraphim at the wedding of the then Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 - though as ever, the instrumental soloist inevitably yields much of the limelight to the vocalist in such performances!

In addition to the mainstream performing side of his career, Wallace maintained a lifelong interest in both pushing the trumpet repertoire forward (premiering concertos by composers including Arnold, MacMillan and Maxwell Davies) and also looking back into lost corners of its past. He took an interest in the legacy of the Cyfarthfa Band, one of the best-documented early British brass bands and influential on the subsequent development of that unique tradition - works written for the band’s instruments and other historic brass instruments (keyed bugles, ophicleides and the like) were a lifelong interest of Wallace’s. Julien Tollot’s arrangements for such forces of Haydn’s string quartets were another key rediscovery - featuring in 2025’s English Music Festival under the banner ‘steampunk brass’.

Perhaps Wallace’s most significant legacy, though, is the ensemble that bears his name - the Wallace Collection (not to be confused either with the museum of fine arts, nor with the 1960s Belgian pop band…). Conceived as a flexible group both in size and in repertoire, the Wallace Collection’s discography ranges from recent works by Tim Ewers and John Tavener to works by Giovanni Gabrieli and his Venetian contemporaries - along the way taking in Berlioz, Mussorgsky, Sousa and several key recordings of the larger-scale choral works of John Rutter.

This is not to disregard Wallace’s own recordings as a soloist - Baroque concertos, twentieth-century works and rarities. Rheinberger’s Suite for two trumpets and organ Op. 149 is a perfect example - a strange work and hard to categorise, never mind to slot into a programme, yet exactly the sort of piece that would, and did, catch Wallace’s eye, leading to a recording with Jonathan Freeman-Attwood. Without Wallace’s interest in these corners of the repertoire and his desire to wander off the beaten track, it’s easy to imagine such works being wholly forgotten.

Between his performing, academic, compositional and teaching careers, John Wallace’s impact on the world of brass, and more broadly on music at large, has been enormous. His tireless work to promote music for brass instruments, against the ever-present stereotypes of crudeness and lack of refinement, leaves a valuable legacy for subsequent generations to build on.