For those who might be interested, here are a few recordings from a recital given by Black Bayou Brass last week. We felt good about our performance, and put together a pretty challenging program with a limited number of rehearsals. Multiple rehearsals over several weeks or months is a luxury that very few groups outside of student ensembles enjoy, so being able to walk into a rehearsal with most (if not all) of your part ready to go is very important. In the case of one work on this recital – the Triple Concerto by Anthony Plog – rehearsal time with our collaborative pianist was extremely limited, and we prepared ourselves to put it together quickly by studying the score closely in our own rehearsals, and marking entrances and cues very carefully. The last movement of the concerto (included below) is a study in modern counterpoint, and one section in particular is pretty intense for several measures. Our opener was Eric Ewazen’s A Philharmonic Fanfare, which is really quite a good piece for brass trio and lots of fun to play. Also included is an encore – Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee – arranged by our trombonist Micah Everett. We were in need of something flashy and impressive-sounding for our tours and school performances, and this short piece fits the bill perfectly.  Chromatic scales anyone? The real issue for me on this piece was keeping the left hand loose and facile. It might sound counter-intuitive,  but the more you can let go and relax on something technical like this the better it sounds.

All recordings are live and unedited, performed by Black Bayou Brass on February 27, 2012 (Alex Noppe, trumpet; James Boldin, horn; Micah Everett, trombone)

• Eric Ewazen, A Philharmonic Fanfare
• Anthony Plog, Triple Concerto, Movement III (with Richard Seiler, piano)
• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. Micah Everett, Flight of the Bumblebee