An Enjoyable Quintet Program - TONIGHT! (05/04)

[the elephant]

Friends down in the South Mississippi area:

The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet will be performing an excellent recital program at Trinity Episcopal Church in Natchez on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. (THAT'S TONIGHT!) The program is about 90 minutes long, including a 15-minute intermission. We do not get down to Natchez for formal recitals all that often, so I thought to post this notice here. This is sort of an underserved area, so far as live instrumental music is concerned, so if you are around and free, please come on out, and make sure to introduce yourself afterward!

The program will be:

Wilke Renwick - "Dance"
Daniel Speer - Sonata from "Die Bankelsängerlieder"
Richard Wagner - "Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral"
Ludwig van Beethoven - "Turkish March"
Malcolm Arnold - "Quintet"

Intermission (15 minutes)

Franz von Suppè - "Poet and Peasant Overture"
Charles Ives - "Four Songs"
Collier Jones - "Four Movements for Five Brass"
Duke Ellington - "In a Sentimental Mood"
Billy Strayhorn - "Take the 'A' Train"
Irving Berlin - "Puttin’ on the Ritz"
Zequinha de Abreu - "Tico Tico no Fubá"

Trinity Episcopal Church is located at 305 South Commerce Street in Natchez. (Note that the church's website says that all parking is on the streets surrounding the church; there is no dedicated parking lot on site.)

I believe that admission is free, but I do not know for certain. We performed this same program at Chapel of the Cross in Madison this past Sunday and it was free and open to the public.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Trini ... 2F1trpr4nq

[bone-a-phone]

Thanks for posting this. I started a quintet last year, and we're still building our repertoire. It's very interesting to see what a pro quintet chooses to program, and I'm glad to see it's not 100% academic standards. About half of your list is already in our book. I don't want to fall into the trap of only being accessible to music snobs, we need them for sure, but we also want to attract your average redneck, living in a not-altogether-urban setting. I'm interested in hearing more about how other quintets select music, get dates, run rehearsals, pick/keep members, etc..

[bloke]

I like brass quintets and I like Natchez...I wish Natchez were closer.

' seems as though it wouldn't be, but it's nearly a six-hour drive...

[the elephant]

It is about a 2.5-hour one-way leg for me.

[bloke]

It is about a 2.5-hour one-way leg for me.

LOL...

Knowing geography pretty well, "me driving 2-1/2 hours in most any direction" would result in my being "nowhere particularly interesting".


BUMP for QUINTET RECITAL !!!

[the elephant]

Southaven takes me 2 hours and 45 minutes. Baton Rouge takes me three hours. Monroe only takes a bit under two. But going to work takes me an hour.

We have no local Interstate. I live in the 19th Century…

[bloke]

You look to be c. 25 miles from I-55 and blokeplace is about 15 miles from I-269. When I moved to blokeplace, I-269 it wasn't anywhere close to completed, and I was more like 25 miles (on 19-feet-wide/no-shoulder roads) to the closest freeway interchange...and I liked it much better.

I would actually prefer to be the former distance to the nearest freeway exit, because those exits offer criminals a quicker means of getting away from where they stole or shot. Further - as chaos ramps up at a faster-and-faster rate - we're being inundated with more refugees from the west...ok, as I myself - with a lower level of tolerance for robberies and murders - once was. (Everyone's views, preferences, particular life details, and life conditions are slightly different.)


...so was the recital well-received and well-attended?

It looked to be a real crowd-pleaser...

[the elephant]

Both of them went very well. Our programming is always pretty popular. And our personalities work well with the crowd as we take turns introducing the pieces. And everyone seems to really like my arrangement of "Tico-Tico no Fubá" and my story about Donald Duck singing it in 1942.

[arpthark]

Both of them went very well. Our programming is always pretty popular. And our personalities work well with the crowd as we take turns introducing the pieces. And everyone seems to really like my arrangement of "Tico-Tico no Fubá" and my story about Donald Duck singing it in 1942.

Now tell us the story, Uncle Elephant!

[the elephant]

He did not actually sing it, but he danced to it, or stumbled around, more like.

[Three Valves]

Did you wear a tutti fruiti hat?

I dig the monkey drum...

[the elephant]

I am the very model of a modern Carmen Miranda…

[Mary Ann]

A bit more than a couple hours of driving from here -- but I was amused to see Benchsinger on the program because that is the warm-up piece for my quintet. We cannot, however, even approach playing the Arnold, and I would have loved to hear the entire thing. I don't suppose you recorded it?

[bloke]

When I played with the Ole Miss quintet - and someone asked me if I was a faculty member, I always told them that I was subbing for Anónima Incógnito, that I was told that they usually introduced the [fill-in-the-blank] Latin piece(s).

[the elephant]

A bit more than a couple hours of driving from here -- but I was amused to see Benchsinger on the program because that is the warm-up piece for my quintet. We cannot, however, even approach playing the Arnold, and I would have loved to hear the entire thing. I don't suppose you recorded it?

No recordings, unfortunately. Our CBA has really strict recording clauses. (Booooo…)

Two of us play in both the MSO brass quintets, the official MSO-BQ, and Capital Brass, which is comprised of MSO players but has existed longer than the MSO Quintet. The two groups share some traditions, and one of them is playing Bankelsängerlieder at *every* program.

As you may know, in baseball, once you've played the 5th inning it is an official game, so if the weather interferes the game ends and the score stands. If you do not meet the requirements when the game is called, then the game must be rescheduled.

We don't like having to reschedule gigs, so once BSL has been played it is an "official gig" and we can leave at any point thereafter; the gig is in the books. It is, of course, a joke. But we always play BSL. Always. Both groups. Always. And it is usually the first or one of the first pieces played, so we can sneak out early on in the program if we want to.



The other anchor piece on the program is the very difficult "Poet and Peasant Overture" out of the early Canadian Brass catalog. Wow! Highly recommended if you have the trumpets for it. There are many tempo and style changes. What a fun Fred Mills arrangement!

And my arrangement of "Tico-Tico no Fubá" is also quite chop-intensive. When we read it I caught four distinct glares, but everyone enjoyed the piece so much that we committed to it. It works very well if your group has the technique to pull it off and sound relaxed and "in the groove" so to speak.

Here is the 1981 recording of CB playing the Von Suppé…