A Recital by the American Brass Quintet
Chris Gekker, trumpet
Stuart Stephenson, trumpet
Eric Reed, horn
Hillary Simms, trombone
John D. Rojak, bass trombone

A Recital by the American Brass Quintet

By Matthew Mugmon

The American Brass Quintet’s 2006 album In Gabrieli’s Day offers a vivid journey through the music of composers of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. This multifaceted program begins with a set of selections from that album, delivering a miniature musical tour of Italy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The polyphonic fabric of these compositions makes them well suited for adaptation to the sound of the modern brass quintet—something that Raymond Mase, who played trumpet with the American Brass Quintet (ABQ) from 1973 to 2013, has demonstrated well in his arrangements of these works.

One of the central musical genres of the late Renaissance was the madrigal, a term used for songs for multiple independent voices singing the same secular poetic text. These pieces were also written without a pre-existing musical structure, which allowed composers to accentuate the meanings of individual words and phrases; this sort of word-painting or madrigalism—where, for instance, a falling melodic line might accompany a passage that evokes death— was a specialty of Marenzio, whose career centered in Rome. The text of Scendi dal Paradiso evokes the idea of Venus descending from heaven to Earth in order to bless a wedding, and the falling melody at the opening certainly refers to this heavenly descent. A cascade of ascending motives toward the middle conjures the text’s reference to stars; hymnlike passages alternate with faster ones in this celebratory work, which contrasts in its mood with the better known—and often quite dark—contributions to the madrigal genre by Marenzio and many others.

More solemn is Giovanni Gabrieli’s madrigal Sacrio tempio d’honor (Sacred Temple of Honor), which, like Marenzio’s madrigal, connects to a wedding; this one was written to mark that of noblewoman Bianca Cappello and Francesco I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Among other roles in Venice, Gabrieli held the position of organist at St. Mark’s Basilica, and indeed he is best remembered today for antiphonal works that explored the sonic potential of that building’s spacious interior. But finely crafted compositions like this short madrigal serve as a reminder of Gabrieli’s significant presence across Venetian musical life.

Appearing on the program between and after these adaptations of madrigals are two works in a different genre by composers who are somewhat lesser known than Marenzio and Gabrieli. The first of those figures, Luigi Mazzi, was a composer and noted organist active at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries; he was closely associated with Ferrara (to the northeast of Bologna) but also worked in Modena (to Bologna’s northwest). The term canzon at one time referred specifically to arrangements mostly of French chansons, but it was then used for new compositions in a similar style, which typically featured imitation among the voices. In Canzon Prima a 5 by Mazzi, the energetic fugal passage at the outset establishes the tone for an animated exchange among instruments. Quite similar is the canzon by Giovanni Cangiasi, who was from Milan and lived in various places in northern Italy. Cangiasi, a Franciscan Friar, also spent a few years at the abbey in Locarno, Switzerland. Cangiasi’s instrumental works appeared in Scherzi forastieri, published in 1614, and the title of this four-voice piece, La Girometta, refers to a popular song that Cangiasi quotes at the outset of the composition.

Rounding out the musical tour of Italy are two balletti by Giovanni Gastoldi. Gastoldi’s career centered in Mantua, later the home of Claudio Monteverdi before the latter moved to Venice. A balletto is a sung piece for dancing, and Gastoldi’s collection of several five-voice balletti, first published in 1591, was a smashing success. On this program, these brief works replace the often elaborate polyphonic textures found in the madrigals and canzons with a refreshing clarity.

Offering a counterpoint on the program to these forays into Renaissance and Baroque music of Italy are several quite recent works by American composers, all of whom are closely connected in some way to the city of New York. David Snow was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1954, and studied at Eastman and Yale. Now based in New York City, Snow has garnered numerous awards as a composer. His Dance Movements continue the long tradition of music for dancing found in Gastoldi’s balletti, but Snow’s are rooted in modern experiences; he has described writing the piece “while working as a data-entry clerk for one of those consulting firms that proliferate around Washington, D.C.,” saying that “staring at a monitor for eight hours a day probably influenced the schizoid nature of this work.” He added, “like most good dance music,” Dance Movements “swings, and it swings hard.” That much is clear at the start, with the raucous, fanfare-like trumpet duet that makes up the opening movement. The second movement begins this time with the trombones but quickly becomes a conversation among the forces of the quintet, and of special note in the third movement is how a stunning chorale offsets the overall swagger. The fourth movement, for trumpets and French horn, revives the fanfare energy of the first movement, while the fifth gives trombones the extended duet they have waited for since their brief outings in the second movement. This movement becomes a contentious conversation between the trombones, which operate as one subgroup, and the trumpets and horn, which serve as another. But a horn solo paves the way to the finale, which continues uninterrupted from the fifth movement. The ensemble concludes together, and does so definitively.

Tyshawn Sorey, who was born in Newark, New Jersey, and studied at Columbia University, is a multifaceted musician who has spoken about his resistance to the usual boundaries in musical discourse, such as between Jazz and classical genres, or between composition and improvisation. Sorey defines his different activities, such as Jazz drumming and composition, as part of a larger, unified pursuit, and in a 2022 interview published on the TIDAL music streaming platform, he connected that holistic idea to his Black identity: “Black art has always resisted any kind of category,” he said, adding that “for me, it’s more or less a composite way of knowing. I’m not only interested in my music, or in Black music or Jazz or Classical music. I’m interested in all music. The Black aesthetic celebrates not only our traditions, but also other traditions around us.” In 2024 Tyshawn Sorey’s work was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize for his Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith), for alto saxophone and orchestra. His new composition for the ABQ, Largo (For Quincy Hilliard), was premiered just this year; Hilliard, the work’s honoree, has composed notable works for wind ensemble. Sorey’s composition calls for two flugelhorns rather than the usual trumpets, a choice (along with Sorey’s instruction that the players avoid accents and attacks, and that they honor rests and tempo markings with precision) that perhaps aligns with the prominence of sustained sounds throughout the work and points toward the composition’s contemplative sensibility.

The premiere of Sorey’s Largo took place at Juilliard, where composer Philip Lasser has taught for more than thirty years. Lasser has written for a range of ensemble types, and he composed Common Heroes, Uncommon Land for the ABQ for the thirtieth anniversary of its residency at Juilliard, where it was first heard in 2018. As described on Lasser’s website, Common Heroes, Uncommon Land is an affirmative exploration of “the glory of the everyday. It celebrates the human spirit in its daily routine and uncrushable work ethic.” Also, each movement “explores a particular facet of the American experience” and Lasser includes a different poem as a kind of epigraph to be read aloud at the start of each movement. The first movement evokes a world astir with new energy at dawn (with what Lasser described as “urban heroes in their dogged morning trek towards work and sustenance”); next, a poem read over a French horn solo provides a bridge to the second movement, which “honors the farmers in their rural struggle with the land” in part through that instrument’s majesty. Poems by Langston Hughes on joy and dreams prompt the third and fourth movements, and a poem that points toward future action (and that contains the work’s title) sets up the calmly heroic epilogue.

Born in New Rochelle, New York, Joan Tower—like Sorey after her—studied at Columbia University. She initially focused her compositional energies on chamber works, and in the early 1980s she began writing works for orchestra. But chamber composition remained important to her output, and she composed Copperwave for the ABQ in a commission by Juilliard for the institution’s 100th anniversary. As Tower has explained the work’s title, “Copper (in brass) creates a weighty (and heavy) motion and feeling that travels in waves (and circles) throughout the piece.” She goes on to relate that her “father was a mining engineer and dealt with copper in some of his jobs in Latin America, where the family lived for nine years—hence the ‘conga’ rhythm.” Much like geologic strata, melodic lines—frequently stepwise and moving in circles, like waves—in this spacious score are layered and juxtaposed. A passage of dance-like rhythms toward the end sets up a resounding conclusion.

— © Matthew Mugmon