Simon Wills (musician)

Simon Wills is an eclectic and at times controversial musician based in the UK, who follows parallel careers as composer, conductor and performer.

His composition shows clear influence from the Second Viennese School, Varese, Eisler and Vaudeville, with some ethnic aspects which stem from a lifelong interest in Arab culture in general and the "Tarab" style of music in particular. His output follows two distinct trajectories. The serious work, though tuneful, is highly organised intellectually, and generally very dark in its subject matter. Works in this category include the choral ballade "Die Brück am Tay", "Ballet for Bedlam" and two concertos for trombone, the first of which was premiered by Christian Lindberg in Stockholm with the composer conducting. In 2003 Wills attracted attention in the German speaking world with the score for "A Day Close to Summer", a pantomime by the stage director Tatjana Gürbaça. This was a “prequel” to Purcell’s "Dido and Aeneas" and was produced amid considerable controversy at the Festspielhaus in Baden Baden, Germany. He has in recent years written several pieces for a German independent company, the Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble. The most recent of these was a full-length opera, "The Secret Agent", adapted by the composer from Joseph Conrad’s novel of the same name. It was premiered in Feldkirch, Austria in 2006. The subject matter, terrorism and betrayal, was controversial, and in the last measure of the piece a character suicide-bombs the audience. Despite the emotional violence of the work it was a major critical and popular success. It led to a commission for a comedy, "The Stolen Smells" which will be produced in 2009. The composer usually acts as his own librettist. He is much preoccupied with clarity and economy of means, refuses to discuss musical processes and is strongly critical of musicians who form schools and movements (which he calls “clumps”) and has on occasion attracted hostility for his attacks on academic commentators, whom he regards as parasitic.

This uncompromising work is balanced by what the composer calls “diversions” which act as an outlet for his well-developed sense of the bizarre. Works in this category include "Goat! – A silly story in sonata form, A Prelude and Fugue for Christmas, Da Sore Chops Boogie" (scored “for anyone who turns up”), "A Breach of the Peace" and a cult arrangement for four trombones of "Stars and Stripes Forever". At the request of Claudio Abbado, in 1988 he made an orchestral version of a wind band march by Prokofiev which was used in an Emmy-winning film by the Spitting Image company.

Wills worked for some years with the Ferrarese conceptual and performance artist Giovanna Strozzapreti. Pieces resulting from this collaboration included "Miele, Invece" and "In Vespa". Wills was injured during a performance of this last work and he and Strozzapreti are now estranged.

He suffers from a serious and painful disability in one hand. This has had a far-reaching influence, since the only instrument that can be played with numb fingers is the trombone. Despite an ambivalent attitude to the instrument, he has enjoyed a distinguished playing career, spending several years in the London Symphony Orchestra and a long period as principal in The Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He still performs in many UK orchestras and works as a solost. He has given many modern music premieres and in 2006 was soloist in the first performance of "Judas Mercator" by Peter Maxwell Davies. The other side effect of his disability is complete inability to play a keyboard. Composition is done without an instrument and this may account for the stark and concentrated quality of much of the composer's music.

He has been a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London since 1986. The trombone faculty there, which also includes Eric Crees and Peter Gane, is among the most successful in the world with former students in many distinguished posts including a high percentage of the chairs in London orchestras. He has also taught at the Conservatoire Superieure de Paris, Tallinn Academy, North Texas State University and Almaty Conservatoire. His approach to teaching is wholistic and avoids instrument-centred thinking as much as possible.

His forays into orthodox academe have been infrequent but include two chapters in "The Cambridge Companion to Brass" and papers on the social and economic history of the musc profession at Royal Academy of Music in London and the Cité de la Musique in Paris.

Partly in pursuit of compositional influence, he has made a speciality of performing in unusual or exotic places, including Kazakhstan, where he conducted the Turan Alem Syphony Orchestra, India, parts of Africa and the former Soviet Union. In 2007 he conducted what is believed to have been the first complete performance of Mozart’s "Requiem Mass" to have been given in Uganda. His African travels led to his adoption by the M-Lisada street band in Kampala, a cooperative of street children who support themselves by playing.

For some year he composed under the pseudonym Eric Foad but has since retired the title and uses his own name for most of his acknowledged works. However, he is known to have a female pseudonym which he refuses to divulge, though it is known that some music written under that name is widely popular. Aliases seem to fascinate him: though he denies it, he is also rumoured to have been the anonymous author of the satirical column "Old Notecracker".