FRANK RENTON has doubtless the best known voice in the world of brass, and his experience as player, conductor, composer, arranger and commentator has given him an unrivalled background to create all sorts of musical entertainments.

He started creating radio programmes in the mid-1970s working with producer Bob Neill at BFBS in Singapore, where Frank was serving as Bandmaster of the Band of the Gordon Highlanders at the time. When ten years later Frank took up appointments in London with the Royal Artillery Bands he began working with Radio 2 producer Ray Harvey on a programme called Concert Bandstand, and with the BBC Radio Orchestra and Concert Orchestra.

In the 1990s after a couple of times standing in for Roy Newsome on Listen to the Band he was asked to become the regular presenter of the programme from January 1995 and did so until May 2018, over a thousand programmes and something like eight thousand pieces of music. It’s quite unusual for one person to present a programme like that for so long but Frank has a unique blend of knowledge and microphone style that the listeners enjoyed and the BBC stuck with him. In 2018 a change of style for BBC Radio 2 and with it a change of schedule meant that there was no room for Listen to the Band, and Frank’s time with the BBC came to an end.