June 1 2026

A cup of tea with musician Julian Gaskell  

Written by Edvard Grieg, the original musical score for Peer Gynt belnds Norwegian folk influence with romantic orchestral moments and theatrical storytelling.  Your might have heard some of the most famous pieces of music in adverts or films. Perhaps the most well known is the Troll theme called In The Hall of the Mountain King.   

Show director Bill Scott approached musician Julian Gaskell about arranging and performing the music for this production … on harmonicas.  We caught up with Julian to talk about how he went about this mammoth task.  

Can you tell us how you went about adapting the music for Peer Gynt?  

I started by listening to various versions of the Peer Gynt Suite including Duke Ellington’s 1960 recording to familiarise myself with the tunes. 

I tried a few obvious ones such as ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ straight away on the harmonica, and found they pushed at the limits of my harmonica playing.  Most harmonicas are fixed to a specific key, usually a major key.  I already had a few minor key harmonicas as well, and one of these was great for the start of ‘Mountain King’ but soon ran out of notes.  Grieg used a lot of modulation in all the pieces, so fixed key harmonicas just didn’t cut it!  I managed to do a four-harmonica-juggling version of ‘Mountain King’ anyway as a proof-of-concept. 

Next step was getting some chromatic harmonicas, more difficult to play but with all the necessary notes to modulate and play Grieg.   These started to arrive in various conditions from ‘online auction sites’, and soon I had a fully fixed up Hohner Chromonica 64 which was capable of doing most of the heavy lifting… so back to the Grieg. 

I worked from downloaded digital scores of the original Grieg, taking the main tunes I had identified, transposing them to a do-able key within the harmonica range, then attempting to build chords and harmony using the harmonicas I had.   Where I didn’t have the bass notes I sampled the lowest octave from the Hohner and digitally fixed them. 

As I got more and more into the process I started hankering after even more harmonicas, eventually I found a Suzuki Chromatix 64 which was like a super easy playing and big sounding version of the Hohner.  Finally after weeks of it weighing heavy on my mind I invested in a proper bass harmonica, this felt like the missing link or something, suddenly everything made sense, the sound of the bass harmonica instantly bringing trolls, mountains and fjords to life.   

How many songs did you record for Miracle Theatre’s Peer Gynt ?  

I think there are maybe 8 Grieg tunes, but with the incidental music which I composed, plus backgrounds and sound FX there are about 30 in total! 

From Grieg’s Peer Gynt there is: 

• Hall of the Mountain King (of course) 

• Morning Mood (obviously) 

• Anitra’s Dance – a few variations 

• Death of Ase – very much influenced by Duke Ellington version of this which is one of the most moving pieces of music I have heard 

• Solveig’s Song 

• Peer Gynt’s Homecoming 

Other Grieg pieces I used: 

Når mitt øye – a traditional Norwegian song adapted by Grieg (from 25 Norwegian songs and Dances, number 9) – for the ‘last waltz’ 

Fantaisie sur une danse norvégienne – one of Griegs ‘traditional dances’ which was adapted by Django Reinhardt in the 1930s – for the ‘maypole dance’ 

The wedding background music is a selection of traditional Scandinavian polkas… 

When did you first start to learn the harmonica?  

A long long time ago, I must have been 14 I think.  I was a proper young-fogey at the time and wanted to be in the Beatles, first thing I learned was ‘Love me Do’.      Soon graduated to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen so the harmonica has always been there… 

What would you like Peer Gynt audiences to feel when they hear the music during the show ?  

I think the show itself is an emotional roller-coaster already, I just hope to emphasise and enhance where necessary… And to feel that bass-mountain-troll-harmonica wonder 

The harmonica seems like a simple instrument but Bill said you used 7 harmonicas for the Peer Gynt music – how did you manage that?!  And can you tell us a bit about the different types of harmonica?  

Think I covered this above!!   

• Diatonic harmonicas – fixed to a specific key – I have a full set of 12 of these.  They are the standard thing you usually hear harmonica plates use, great for playing ‘cross-harp’ for a bluesy sound.   

• Diatonic Minor Harmonicas – fixed to a minor scale.  These are great, I have been playing these for years and they have featured heavily in my own songs over the years… I have 3 Harmonic Minors and 2 Natural Minors, they fall easily into a very European klezmer kind of sound 

• Chromatic Harmonicas – these are fixed to a key, usually C, ie. the white notes on a piano BUT they have a button which shifts the whole thing up a semitone to give all the black notes.  As a result they can cover all the notes in any key, but they are more difficult to play with infinite possibilities of bum-notes… I have a few of these, a very vintage (1940’s I think) 3-octave one in G (which I used for the wedding tunes), a standard Hohner 3 octave, and a couple of 4 octave ones which handled most of the tunes on this project. 

• Bass Harmonica – this just plays bass notes.  Built like a brick it is heavy and takes a lot of air but sounds like nothing else, brings to mind a baritone sax crossed with an alpenhorn! 

• Chord harmonicas… these consist of a VERY long harmonica (about a metre) with all the major and minor chords across all the keys.  So you can’t play tunes, just chords.  These are very rare and expensive, however by using a pile of diatonic harmonicas (each of which has 2 chords) I was able to play most of the necessary chords most of the time with what I had… 

What other instruments do you play and do you have a favourite? (we won’t tell the others!)   

Guitar, accordion, piano… usually guitar is favourite but I have accordion and piano phases too! 

What projects or performances are coming up next for you?  

A new ‘Julian Gaskell & his Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ album is written and rehearsed, we will be recording that over the summer and putting it out somehow… some banging tunes and fancy lyrics, I have even managed to sneak a harmonica on one of the songs. 

‘HAH BUMHUG!’ will be returning for Christmas – I play accordion and act like a clown in this show with Ethel Darling (Lonely Clown Club), which Daniel Richards helped write script and lyrics for.  We got so far into the Dickensianismof it all that i have since fallen into a ‘Dickens Hole’ and plan to work together with the team to do another Dickens story, probably ‘Hard Times’. 

Do you remember your first live performance ?  

School assembly in the late 1980s.  I played like Jimi Hendrix while the singer sang like Freddie Mercury, the drummer drummed like a Prince jam and bassist rumbled like Led Zeppelin.  It was wild.  There is a cassette of it somewherebut I don’t want to ruin it by listening… 

What kind of music do you most enjoy performing ?  

All of it!