James Boldin's Horn World

Thoughts on Teaching and Playing the Horn

Posts tagged with Music for Brass Trio

Upcoming Projects, Part 1: Performances and Premieres

February 6, 2017

For various reasons, I fell so far behind on writing my customary Semester Preview post this year that I decided to forgo it entirely. In lieu of that single post, I decided to write individual “blurbs” about  my upcoming activities.

Our faculty brass trio, Black Bayou Brass, recently commissioned two  new multi-movement works, which we’ll be premiering this spring and summer. The first piece is Inventions, by Sy Brandon. Commissioned through a consortium with several other brass ensembles, this substantial five-movement work is accessible and challenging (though not prohibitively so). In the composer’s words:

The title “Inventions’ has a double meaning as a musical invention is a short contrapuntal composition that is usually based on a single theme. The second meaning is that each movement represents a significant invention.

During the composition process Dr. Brandon provided sound samples and ample descriptions of each movement, and allowed us to provide feedback as each movement took shape. Follow the links below for more information and a sound sample of each movement.

  1. The Wheel
  2. The Metronome
  3. The Periscope
  4. Morse Code
  5. The Airplane

For anyone interested in commissioning a new work, a consortium is a very effective way to generate funding. The fee for Inventions was very reasonable, and we are looking forward to performing it on our March 14 faculty recital.

In June we’ll travel to the International Women’s Brass Conference  to premiere a new work by Dr. Gina Gillie, Associate Professor of Horn at Pacific Lutheran University. Gillie has published a handful of compositions, and is quickly making a name for herself. Her music is tuneful, engaging, and very fun to play. We were fortunate to be awarded funding for this commission from the International Horn Society’s Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Fund.  The Meir Rimon Fund is a fantastic program, and well-worth exploring. Gillie’s new work is entitled Scenes from Black Bayou,  and was inspired by the beautiful natural scenery at Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge (see image above). Black Bayou is, of course, what our trio is named after, and is located a few miles north of the ULM campus. We’ve begun rehearsing the trio, and are having a great time with it. If you’ll be attending this year’s IWBC at Rowan University in New Jersey, we’d love to see you at our performance.

Upcoming Concert: New Works for Brass Trio

April 10, 2014

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On Sunday, April 13th, Black Bayou Brass will premiere six new works for brass trio. These pieces were submitted in response to a call for scores from the Mid-South Chapter of NACUSA (National Association of Composers/USA). According to its website, NACUSA is “devoted to the promotion and performance of American concert hall music,” and they are certainly fulfilling their mission! Our trio is always interested in new music, and we eagerly awaited the arrival of scores once the call was announced. We quickly received more scores than we could prepare in the brief time we had (the deadline for submissions was March 1), but hopefully we will be able to perform all of the music we received at some point in the future.

As for Sunday’s program, a wide variety of styles and approaches to brass writing are represented. Here’s a list of the titles and composers.

All of the works are very playable, but not without their challenges. Perhaps the most interesting part of the rehearsal process was discovering each composer’s musical voice, both in individual parts and in their writing for the ensemble as a whole. Contrary to what you may have heard about “modern” music, much of the material is tonal (or tonally-inspired), and often very tuneful. Many of the composers also seem to have been influenced by the heroic fanfares and flourishes which distinguish much of the brass literature, but others went in a different direction, exploring some very unique colors and sonorities. The image above is my stand setup (in my teaching studio) for Mel Mobley’s Flotsam, a quasi-antiphonal work which asks the players to rotate during and in between musical statements. The result is very interesting (think Doppler effect). Surprisingly, there is very little muting (or hand stopping for the horn) in any of these works, but that is ok with me because I think those effects can sometimes be overdone.

If this brief post makes you curious about these new works, come out to our concert (5:00 p.m., April 13th, University of Louisiana at Monroe). If live out of the area but are still interested in hearing the premieres, I’ll plan to post some video and or audio samples from the concert – with the composers’ permission, of course!