Corps Colonel, The Royal Corps of Army Music

Colonel Simon Haw MBE

Colonel Simon’s career in the Army has been shaped by a great deal of service in the Household Division, as an instrumentalist in the Welsh Guards and Director of Music in both the Scots and Coldstream Guards, as well as Bandmaster and Director of Music appointments in Regional Bands.

Following study at the Defence Academy in 2013 on the Intermediate Command and Staff Course, he served as SO2 Public Affairs Plans at HQ Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. Simon has seen Service overseas during his career, most recently as StratCom Director for Special Operations Joint Task Force in Iraq in 2019. He assumed Command of the Bands of the Household Division in 2020 and was appointed Corps Colonel, The Royal Corps of Army Music in January 2023.

Composition is at the heart of Simon’s work. In 2017 he composed Passchendaele, used by the BBC for its live broadcast of the 100th anniversary event of the battle, for which the BBC production team received a BAFTA Award 2018. Simon was commissioned to compose a major work for choir and orchestra, Earth Dance – A Cantata in Six Parts, to mark the Biennial Meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London, April 2018. And in the same month at Cadogan Hall in London, Simon’s Trumpet Call was given its world-premiere by soloist Alan Hughes, Principal Trumpet of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The latter half of 2018 was committed to the composition of Cenotaph Requiem, written to mark the 100th Anniversary of the end of World War I – a large scale work that incorporates elements of the Latin Mass, interspersed with Instrumental movements that portray a chronological narrative of World War I.

Amongst his latest work is Regina, written in February 2021, to mark the 95th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, then Head of the Commonwealth, in the seventieth year of Her Majesty’s reign. Green Canopy, a twelve-movement work for solo violin and orchestra was released on the 16th of March 2022.

In 2011 Simon Haw was honoured to become a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). In 2022, Simon was awarded a BAFTA in the British Academy Television Crafts Awards, for his work on the BBC production of the RBL Festival of Remembrance, broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall in 2021.

RCAM 30 Legacy Recordings

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National Anthem – arr. Brown

Nimrod from Enigma Variations – Sir Edward Elgar OM GCVO