In 2003 I was commissioned by Birmingham Jazz to write a large-scale work of my own choice. The resulting work, Howl – a musical setting of the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, was premiered in January 2004 in front of a near-capacity audience at Birmingham’s CBSO Centre. The success of this work and its cross-genre appeal gave me the idea to tour the work around the UK in 2005 and 2006 to mark the 50th Anniversaries of both its first public reading and its first publication by City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.

This work has since been performed a total of 7 times around the UK:

StAnza Poetry Festival, St Andrews in February 2005; Cheltenham International Jazz Festival in May 2005; Glastonbury Festival in June 2005; The Vortex, London in October 2005; Rooty Frooty, Birmingham on October 7th 2005 - a special performance of parts I and II in Birmingham to mark the actual 50th anniversary of the first public reading by Ginsberg in 1955; Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in November 2005; Between the Lines Literary Festival in Belfast in April 2006.

Throughout this time, I have been in close contact with the Allen Ginsberg Trust in New York, who have been extremely helpful and supportive with regard to permission to use the work and also moral support and encouragement.

Statement by Naomi Jaffa, Director, 2005 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival:
"I first came face to face (or rather, ear to ear) with Steve Tromans' Howl at the StAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews in March 2005 and I can't compare it to anything I've experienced before or since. It was a great piece of programming (the late-night slot after a day's straight poetry readings) and we copied it shamelessly for the 2005 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in November, even though I had some concerns about whether the Aldeburgh audience would be up to the challenge.

"Relentless, fast, energising, mesmerising - there's no polite response possible (nor would Ginsberg ever want one!). Happily, it was a risk hugely worth taking, and proof that festival directors should never underestimate people's capacity and desire to be stretched.

"Tickets sold well and 160 people filled Aldeburgh's historic Jubilee Hall (home to Benjamin Britten's original Festival of Music and the Arts in 1948) and set out on the Howl journey with palpable excitement and some trepidation - how loud was it going to be? would we be able to decipher the words?

"Soon everyone abandoned themselves to this words-and-music rollercoaster. From cacophony to lyricism, from fury to love, Tromans' Howl (delivered in the to-die-for Northern Irish voice of Sid Peacock) leaves audiences breathless and exhilarated in equal measure. And certainly at Aldeburgh, foot-stamping and whistling and yelling for more."