It just isn't the same without the euphonium playing the solo. . .

Here is a link to the Korea Brass Choir playing Holst 2nd suite in F. I think the arrangement and the group are really good (although I think they should have used a euphonium, my unbiased opinion).

Korea Brass- part one; 1st and 2nd movements

Korea Brass- part two: 3rd and 4th movements

"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.

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.

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.

John Stevens

Three of the pieces I contributed to the ABEL master list of chamber music pieces are works for tuba/euphonium quartet by John Stevens. These pieces are Power, Music 4 Tubas, and Dances. He wrote these pieces when he was working on his Masters at Yale between 1973-1975. All three of these pieces are still a standard in the repertoire. However, Power seems to be a favorite by most groups. 

Power is a shorter piece (under 1:30 minutes) but it is really fast paced. 

Music 4 Tubas is a 3 movement work (about 8 minutes)

I. Lively

II. Chorale

III. Rock

Dances is a single movement work divided into three parts, (Fast, Slow, Fast). 

Listening Project

Here is a list of pieces I played for our listening project. The ones with stars next to them are ones I didn't get to.

1) Pictures at an Exhibition: Bydlo Mussorgsky, Modest Petrovich (1839-1881) Burning River Brass Russian Carnival

2) Pictures at an Exhibition: Baba Yaga   Mussorgsky, Modest Petrovich (1839-1881)   Philip Jones Brass Ensemble Brass Splendour

*3) The Marriage of Figaro Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791) Monarch Tuba-Euphonium Quartet Metamorphosis

4) Queen Of The Night'S Aria From "The Magic Flute" Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791) Burning River Brass Of Knights & Castles

5) Ain't Misbehavin' Waller, Fats Empire Brass Braggin' In Brass - Music Of Duke Ellington, Etc.

*6) Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Raye, Don Empire Brass Braggin' In Brass - Music Of Duke Ellington, Etc.

7) Porgy & Bess: Summertime Gershwin, George Atlantic Brass Quintet En Concert

*8)The Earle of Oxford's March Byrd, William, arr. Howarth Chicago Brass Choir Pictures in Brass

9) Scythian Suite (Mvt. 2): The Evil God and Dance of Pagan Monsters Prokofiev, Sergei Burning River Brass Russian Carnival

10) Concertino in A Minor, Op. 94 Shostakovich, Dmitri (1906-1975) Burning River Brass Russian Carnival

*11) Toccata & Fuge BMV568 - Toccata Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750) German Brass Best of German Brass

*12) Toccata & Fuge BMV568 - - Fuge Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750) German Brass Best of German Brass

Where can you find Cd's and Sheet music?

Here are some sites where you can buy either recordings of various brass groups or sheet music of various pieces:

Tap Music sales:
https://asp6.secure-shopping.com/tapmusic/browse.asp?MOVE=NEXT&Cat=CGE&CurrentPage=0&path=R,CGE
This site has well over 100 CD's of Brass Chamber Music

www.Amazon.com has almost 2000 CD's of brass chamber music. A lot of brass transcriptions can be found here.

Hickey's Music center Online
http://www.hickeys.com/index.htm
This is a great place to find CDs or printed music.

ITEA has it own publishing company at
http://www.tubaeuphoniumpress.com/
Good place to find tuba/ euphonium chamber works