Edward Chance was born in St Albans, England, started piano lessons at the age of seven and began playing the euphonium in the St. Albans Salvation Army Junior Band at the age of nine. He attended St. Peter`s Primary School and The St.Albans Boys` Grammar School (now Verulam) and The Watford School Of Music. At the age of 15 he won the National Junior Chromatic Harmonica Championship.
At Nottingham University he became president of the Music Society and conducted the Chamber Orchestra. Graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree, he was awarded a Vaughan Williams Trust Scholarship to study French Horn with Ifor James at the Royal Academy Of Music, where he won the Ella Mary Jacob Prize and the Musicians' Union Award.
After a year in Bristol as co-principal horn with the BBC Training Orchestra, he began working in London's thriving freelance scene with many of the symphony, opera and chamber orchestras, especially the Royal Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Orchestra, with whom he travelled extensively around Europe, United States and Japan. He was appointed principal horn of both the Orchestra Of St. John's Smith Square and the English Sinfonia with which orchestras he also appeared as soloist. Working in the studio with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, he played on the recordings of many film scores, including several by Jerry Goldsmith and Henry Mancini, and on various television shows, rock albums and videos.
For nine years he was brass section coach for the Cambridgeshire County Youth Orchestra, for whom the first of his brass works were written, travelling abroad with them and directing in chamber concerts. He now combines a busy and varied concert schedule with writing, arranging, coaching and teaching. He and was Chamber Music and Horn coach this year on the faculty of the Idyllwild Arts Summer School in Southern California, also performing in their Chamber Recital Series.
Hobbies include cooking, Classical Latin and computers.
