UPDATE ON THE HURRICANE HARVEY BENEFIT CONCERT: MUSIC FOR HOPE

THANK YOU NORTHWEST VISTA COLLEGE. The benefit concert featuring ADELANTE WINDS with special guests OLMOS BASIN BRASS was a great success. We would like to thank the audience for coming out to Northwest Vista and supporting fellow Texans with their donations of non-perishable items. Thank you for proving that TEXAS stands with TEXANS and that we have each other’s backs.

HURRICANE HARVEY RELIEF CONCERT

Music For Hope Benefit Concert for Hurricane Harvey Relief

BRASS QUINTET

If you are lucky enough to play in a brass quintet you know how much fun it is!  In the brass quintet you get to play a lot, you get to have the melody and everyone can have a feature! I ask you, what more could you want? The modern brass quintet gets to play jazz, pop, traditional church music, contemporary church music, classical, and art music, actually anything you can imagine, any song you can think of, you can play in a brass quintet.

I personally will choose arrangements for brass quintet by the arranger or composer. There are some people who are just really good at writing for brass quintet. Some arrangers don’t put in enough rests to accommodate a concert performance, some arrangers don’t share the melody and other arrangers seem to pigeon-hole instruments instead of exploring tone textures.  Some of my favorite arrangers for brass quintet are; Jack Gale (anything by JG), Paul Chauvin, Fred Mills, Jari Villenueva, Gary Selecta, Holcombe (both), Henderson, Frackenpohl, Todd Marchand, Plog, Nagle, Keith Snell, Niehaus, Udell. Just to name a few, I know there are many that I have missed.  I am talking about contemporary arrangers, the old standards will always stand. Gabrieli, I do love Giovanni Gabrieli, so much so that when I was working my master’s degree at Texas State I wrote,
“Giovanni Gabrieli: The Musical Times, His Life, Work, and His ‘In Ecclesiis”

I have been fortunate enough in my lifetime to have witnessed  brass quintets such as Canadian Brass and the Empire Brass create an audience for brass quintet performance. I don’t underestimate these groups gift to me as a performer. Their influence inspired great arrangements and inspired brass musicians around the world to want to emulate these groups. I get to be a brass player in an era where brass quintets are popular and are in demand as performing groups. I am also fortunate enough to see a new and interesting style of Art Music. Groups such as Mnozil Brass, Synergy Brass, NO BS! Brass Band.  There has also been a rebirth of the street bands from New Orleans but with a twist, where jazz-pop fusion is being developed. I can’t wait to see what will happen next. If you are paying attention you will be able to witness a brass revolution.

From Wikipedia

 The contemporary brass quintet appeared in the late 1940s created by the Chicago Brass Quintet, followed in the 1950s by the American Brass Quintet and the 1960s by the Eastman Brass Quintet. However, it was 1970 with the founding of Canadian Brass that the brass quintet finally became a major hall (i.e. Carnegie Hall main stage) attraction and accepted as a legitimate member of the chamber music world. Two members of the Chicago Brass Quintet can be credited with helping plant the seed for the commercial and musical success of the brass quintet medium: Arnold Jacobs, a tuba player of the Chicago Brass Quintet who taught two Canadian Brass founders, Daellenbach and Watts, and Renold Schilke, a trumpet player also in the Chicago Brass Quintet and a master craftsman who mentored this most successful brass ensemble in history and successfully crafted the first matched set of gold-plated quintet brass instruments.

 

BEETHOVEN’S SYMPHONY NO. 5

This weeks performance blog will discuss Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Are you are familiar with the KHANACADEMY ?   If you are you know it is a wealth of information on anything from Algebra to Beethoven. Click on this blog’s title and visit Gerard Schwarz’ analysis of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Beethoven’s 5th is just one of the pieces Symphony Viva will perform tomorrow night at Bennack Music Center at the University of the Incarnate word. Gerard Schwarz is an American conductor and trumpeter. He was the music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 2011. He served as Music Director of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival between 1982 and 2001. If you like part one you can click here to hear Part 2 of the analysis of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

Symphony Viva

Symphony Viva is San Antonio’s newest Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Viva came together as a group to perform a benefit concert after the Orlando Nightclub shooting in June of 2016. The event was such a success that the Orlando Nightclub Benefit Orchestra became SYMPHONY VIVA. They performed a concert in the spring. The performance in May of 2017  included: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony No. 8. The orchestra is ready to start a new  season for 2017-2018. Symphony Viva is housed at Bennack Music Center at the University of the Incarnate Word. The first program of the new season includes: Beethoven’s No. 5&6 and Rossini’s Wm. Tell Overture. The orchestra is also slated to perform Peter and the Wolf.  The next concert is in San Antonio at Bennack Music Center at the University of the Incarnate Word on Saturday, September 9th at 7:00 pm. Stay tuned for more about this orchestra and the upcoming concert.

 

 

In my previous and first blog, I discussed a brief overview and history of the traditional British Brass Band. This Sunday at the Northeast Baptist Church starting at 6:00 PM the Bexar Brass Band will perform. The Bexar Brass Band is one of San Antonio’s first British Style Brass Bands. The concert material is mostly from the Salvation Army Brass Band Journal. Concert repertoire includes: Ithacan, The Oaken Staff, This I Know, Room at the Cross, All That I Am, Standing on the Promises, Star Lake along with a few other favorites. If you have ever had the pleasure of performing with a British Style Brass Band then you know it is addictive and that nothing will put a smile on your face faster. Hope to see you there!

 

Sunday, August 27th Bexar Brass Band

The Bexar Brass Band is a British style brass band.

A British brass band is a musical ensemble comprising a standardised range of brass and percussion instruments. The modern form of the brass band in the United Kingdom dates back to the 19th century, with a vibrant tradition of competition based around communities and local industry, with colliery bands being particularly notable. The Stalybridge Old Band (still in existence) was formed in 1809 and was perhaps the first civilian brass band in the world.

British Band instrumentation is the most common form of brass band in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. British-style brass bands are also widespread in continental Europe, Japan and North America. The tradition for brass bands in the UK is continuing, and local communities and schools have brass bands. British band contesting is highly competitive.  Bands organized into five sections much like a football league. Competitions are held throughout the year. They are held at local, regional, and national levels, and at the end of each year there are promotions and relegation’s. The 2016 holder of the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain is the Cory Band from Wales.