The Brass Choir
- Music Educators Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Dec., 1938), pp. 70-71
- Published by: MENC: The National Association for Music Education
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Brass Choir Article
I found a really good article on JSTOR. I would really suggest checking it out.
Burning River Brass
A brass choir founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1996, the Burning River Brass is a fairly newer group compared to the other ensembles. They have four CD's out all with a number of original works and arrangements.
Highlights include:
Russian Carnival
-complete version of Mussorgky's Pictures at an Exhibition
-Prokofiev March from the Three Oranges
Of Knights and Castles
-Mozart's Queen of the Night Aria
Romanza Espana
-Bizet Carmen (5 mvt)
Check out there website here.
Symphonia Tuba/Euphonium Ensemble
Symphonia is a professional tuba/euphonium ensemble made up of some of the top tuba/euphonium professors players in the world (but mostly in the states). I couldn't find any recordings off of youtube, but there is a couple on their webstie that you can download for free. Some of the works they have done are:
Holst 2nd suite in F
Shostakovich Festive Overture
John Williams March from 1942
Holst Mars from the Planets
Brass Ensemble Websites
I found this website that has 600+ Professional (?) Brass Ensemble websites. It isn't just ensembles in the United States but all over the world.
Check it out here.
Canadian Brass
Another outstanding Brass Quintet that has contributed a lot to the brass quintet world.
Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov
Beethoven's 5 Symphony playing with two other brass quintets
Finale from the Firebird played with the Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps
German Brass
The German brass has performed and recorded numerous transcriptions and arrangements of pieces over the years. They have played popular pieces from the '80 Rock group Europe to pieces from the Baroque and Classical periods plus many more.
Some pieces include but not limited to:
Final Countdown by Europe
Toccata and Fugue in G minor by Bach
Overture from the Magic Flute by Mozart
Check them out on YouTube, there is a lot out there.
More from Pictures. . .
So I've been looking on YouTube for various groups playing movements from Pictures at an Exhibition. . .I didn't find very much but this is what I did find.
Some tuba/euphonium choir playing The Old Castle (they have a nice sound)
VMT Brass Choir playing Great Gate of Kiev (it's umm. . . . .something)
Alternative Brass just keeps coming. . . Blast!
Blast!
I guess one could argue if Blast is or is not a brass chamber group. It is an brass ensemble with percussion and color guard. But the brass line is usually around 36+ members. Well, I'm going to act like it is a brass chamber group and talk about the types of and arrangements they play.
But first, a description of Blast. Blast is an combination of many elements.
1) Marching Band/Drum corps element.
-marching
-all brass horn line (trumpets, mellophones, french horns, trombones, marching baritones, euphonium, and tubas)
-battery (snares, tenors and basses)
-colorguard (flag, rifle, sabre and other equipment)
-pit (usually keyboards, tympani, various other non-pitched percussion)
2) Broadway Show element
-stage/theatre
-lights and special effects
-two acts with an intermission
3) The Show
Act One
- Bolero - (M. Ravel)
- Color Wheel - (J. Lee)
- Split Complimentaries - (J. Talbott)
- Everybody Loves the Blues - (M. Ferguson/N. Lane)
- Loss - (D. Ellis)
- Simple Gifts/Appalachian Spring- (A. Copland)
- "Battery Battle" - (T. Hannum/J. Lee)
- Medea- (S. Barber)
Act Two
- Color Wheel Too - (J. Vanderkolff)
- Gee, Officer Krupke! (from West Side Story) - (L. Bernstein/S. Sondheim)
- Lemontech - (J. Vanderkolff)
- Tangerinamadidge - (B. Epperson/J. Vanderkolff)
- Land of Make Believe - (C. Mangione)
- Spiritual of the Earth
- Marimba Spiritual/Earth Beat - (M. Miki)/(M. Spiro)
- Malaguena- (E. Lecuona)
Take a look at the music they play, it's all over the place: Classical, Jazz, Musicals, Ballet, etc.
All of these pieces are arrangements, I don't think there is a full version of any of these pieces,
however I think most of these arrangements could be played by a brass band in a concert setting.
Listen to Simple Gifts, I could easly hear a Brass Choir do it (actually I have, and I did the arrangement).
What makes this alternative is that they play at such a high level while marching, dancing and moving
around. I think one could almost think of this as a larger Boston Brass or Mnozil, Blast does the
same type of entertainment, just on a much larger scale.
More alternative brass. . .
I think I might just change my blog topic to Alternative Brass Transcriptions. . .
I know everyone in the class has seen this video, but i think it's something that should be brought up when talking about brass transcriptions and arrangements. The group I'm talking about is the Mnozil Brass. The Mnozil Brass provide entertainment with a high quality of brass playing. They play in all styles of music: pop, classical, jazz, etc. We have all seen them play Bohemian Rhapsody, which is excellent by the way, but they also done a version of Peter Gun, which has some awesome sounds coming from the trombones. They have also done a whole bunch of jazz tunes, which I can't tell if they are arrangement or originals tunes. But all their music is over the top.
I think this is a group that is dedicated to entertaining the audience. From their web site, "We play applied brass music for people from all walks of live." And I think they do a great job at it. If you want to see more of them, just type in Mnozil Brass into youtube, there are plenty of videos.
It just isn't the same without the euphonium playing the solo. . .
"Light" classical?
What is "light" classical? This was a dilemma that my tuba-euphonium quartet come across when we were preparing for ITEA tuba/quartet competition held this summer. One of the pieces we had to prepare was a light classical transcription. The problem was that we didn't know what that meant. Did they want a piece that was from the classical period (1750-1820) or was it meant to mean something from a broad area of the classical world. We looked at a lot of different pieces: Bach's fugues, a Bruckner ave maria, a couple of overtures but nothing seem to fit. It wasn't until we played the overture from Mozart's The Magic Flute that I came up with an idea that work pretty well. I've pretty much been in love with the Queen of the Night Aria from the Magic Flute since I've first heard it. I've also heard a really good arrangement for brass choir and piccolo trumpet. It was off the Burning River Brass "Of Knights and Castles" CD. It was arranged by Michael Allen with Ryan Anthony playing the piccolo trumpet. When my quartet played the overture from the opera it gave me the idea to try and arrange this piece for two euphoniums and two tubas. The arrangement turn out really well, the quartet liked it as well as our coach John Manning. I guess my point is that there isn't a lot of material out there for our genre, so if you can't find something that fits then go out and arrange it yourself.
On a side note here are two videos from youtube of the aria:
This first one is of a little soprano boy singing the aria. Click here.
The second is of Diana Damrau playing the Queen and singing the Aria. Click here.
Monday, April 21, 2008
An Alternative Form of Brass Chamber Music
Quite a few years ago two of my friends and I formed a euphonium trio. It was for a one time concert, the second half of a senior recital. This trio was a little different from traditional chamber groups, meaning we got our music from 1980's heavy mental/rock bands. This group consisted of five members: 3 euphoniums, 1 drummer, and one singer. The way the arrangements worked out was the first and second euphonium's would play the guitar parts and the 3rd euphonium would play the bass part (I was played the third part).
We called ourselves Il Dissphonio. We wore ripped up jeans and torn Megadeath and Black Sabbath T-Shirts and we rocked out.
We came up with this idea one day in a car ride over spring break. We were listening to some music and jokingly came up with an idea of "How cool would it be to play this stuff on our euphoniums?" The more we thought about it the more were actually liked the idea. About a year later we made it work.
The arrangements were crude at best. We would all gather around the CD player and listen to the form, bass lines, guitar lines and figure them out and played along with the recordings. There was a lot of improve involved. We even experimented with using a silence brass system. We would hook the silence brass system to an amp and we were able to get some really cool sounds. The problem that came up was that the cords we were using weren't the best quality, and the slightest movement would cause feedback. So we joked that this performance was our "unplug" performance.
I'll admit that the performance wasn't the cleanest thing I've ever played in my life, but it was definitely one of the funner moments I've had on stage, at times you almost felt like a rock star. It had a lot of energy and the crowd loved it.
The three pieces we played were:
Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne
Cats in the Cradle by Ugly Kid Joe
War Pigs by Black Sabbath
You can listen to these pieces on our my space page.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Tubby the Tuba
So this last weekend I played trombone with the Eastern Iowa Brass Band. Along with quite a few original pieces we also did some arrangements and transciptions of various pieces. One of the pieces we played was an arrangement of Tubby the Tuba. The story was written by Paul Tripp and the music was written by George Kleinsinger. The tuba solo was played by John Manning and Narrated by Bob Gibbs The story is of a tuba, Tubby, who never gets the melody and is always playing um-pa's, when he tries to play the melody, the orchestra ridicules him and makes him feel ashamed. After the rehearsal, Tubby is walking down by a river and this frog come and cheers Tubby up and teaches him a song. Tubby takes the song back to his orchestra and ends up playing for the orchestra and in the end everyone loves him.
I found on youtube a cartoon from 1947 of the original version. Click here for that version.
One of things I noticed was where all the non-brass solo's in the original went to in a brass band:
Piccolo- 1st Eb cornet soloist
bass clarinet (frog)- bass trombone with a bucket mute.
After hearing the original I thought that the arranger of the Brass Band arrangement did a really nice job bringing over all the different colors that was part of the larger orchestra.
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