While gaining fame throughout the world, they have remained loyal to Salida Aspen Concerts by returning every year since the series started in 1978. The American Brass Quintet will perform the fourth concert in this year’s series at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, July 31 at Valley Fellowship Church, 608 S. San Juan Street in Buena Vista, just up the valley from Salida.
The pre-concert talk with the performers begins at 6:45 p.m.
Music critics often refer to the members of the ABQ as “the high priests of brass.” The quintet, now in its 50th year, specializes in Renaissance and modern music, much of it discovered through its own research. The American Brass members are Raymond Mase and Kevin Cobb, trumpet; David Wakefield, horn; Michael Powell, trombone, and John Rojak, bass trombone.
They will be joined by the Oracle Brass Quintet, an ensemble, which formed at the Eastman School of Music in 2007 and this summer is in residence in Aspen on a fellowship. Members of Oracle are Jonathan Heim and Jay Villella, trumpet; Emily Schroeder, horn; Malcolm Williamson, trombone, and Mike Blair, tuba.
The American Brass Quintet will begin the concert by playing three English fancies by three English composers: John Cooper, John Ward and William Simmes. Their music of the Elizabethan era was greatly influenced by the spread of music and art from Italy across Europe starting in the late 16th Century. More of Cooper’s music has survived than either of the other two composers.
The two quintets massed together will perform three canzoni by the master Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli. These pieces reach back to the pure, glorious sound of the Renaissance era when Venice was the music capital of the Western world and the music reverberated in the great stone churches.
Of modern music, the American Brass Quintet has chosen to perform “Dance Movements” by David Snow (1954), who studied composition at the Eastman School. They will also play “Sextet in E-Flat minor,” by Oskar Bohme.
For their nod to the moderns, the Oracle Brass will play “Suite for Brass Quintet” by Verne Reynolds, who was born in 1926.
The remaining two concerts in the series are described as follows:
Saturday, Aug. 7.
Israeli-born pianist Inon Barnatan (BARNatan) came to Salida for the first time last year. Only 31 years old, Barnatan is considered an expert on Schubert. He will play Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major (The Hunt); Britten/Stevenson’s Peter Grimes Fantasy (from the opera Peter Grimes); Maurice Ravel’s La Valse; and Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959. Mr. Barnatan’s weblink is www.InonBarnatan.com.
Saturday, Aug. 14.
For the final concert in the series, the audience will get a treat they haven’t had since 1981: a solo guitarist. Benjamin Pila is the only classical guitarist chosen to be a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. He has played at New York’s Lincoln Center and Washington DC’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He will play Joaquin Rodrigo’s Tres Piezas Espanolas for Guitar and other pieces for solo guitar. Then Pila will be joined by the Tesla Quartet of Boulder, Colo. Together they will play Luigi Boccherini’s Quintet for Guitar and Strings and Antonin Dvorak’s American Quartet. Weblink: www.BenPila.com.
Tesla Quartet—Ross Snyder, Xian Meng, Megan Mason, and Kimberly Patterson—formed in 2008 at Juilliard and currently holds a fellowship as the Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Last year, the quartet won Second Prize at the Arriaga Chamber Music Competition. The ensemble currently serves as string mentors to the Boulder Youth Symphony, and has public school residencies in Aspen and Vail.
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