Brass, Reeds, and Percussion

Today’s edition of Brass, Reeds, and Percussion opens with “Opening Ceremony,” composed by Richard Phillips, a British composer, conductor, pianist, and trumpeter born in 1962. Phillips first encountered music playing trumpet in the local brass band of the Salvation Army. After studying at the Royal College, he was much in demand as a pianist. Since that time, he has conducted three Salvation Army bands and currently works as a music teacher at Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough, one of the largest music academies in England.

To celebrate Halloween, this edition of Brass, Reeds, and Percussion features creepy music—music that has something to do with monsters or evil or frightening things, music with perhaps a tone of the foreboding. For monster music, we’ll hear a performance of “Godzilla Eats Las Vegas” by Eric Whitaker. But we’ll open from “Nightmare” from the music and dance production called “The Lord of the Dance,” which follows the the Lord of the Dance in a fight against the evil dark lord Don Dorcha.

Prince and Madonna weren't the first popular music singers to go by a single name. In the early part of the 20th century, there was a French singer who went by the name Bach, as in Johann Sebastian Bach. His real name was Charles Joseph Pasquier, and he was what the French call a comic trooper, a singer and comedian who dressed up as a soldier and did comic routines based on the lives of soldiers.

Today's edition of Brass, Reeds, and Percussion features a recording with a baritone saxophone solo. The bari sax has almost the same range as a tuba. So that makes it very appropriate for a tune entitled "Elephant's Tango," which was apparently a popular hit about 1955. It was composed by Bernie Landes, but we've not been able to find information about him other than he composed this dance tune. The performance “Elephant’s Tango” you'll hear when we open the show is by Tommy Rogers and His Ballroom Orchestra.

Óscar Navarro was born in Alicante, Spain, in 1981. He is a composer, musical educator, conductor and clarinetist. In April 2005, he premiered his symphonic poem "Noah’s Ark" with the Young National Orchestra of Spain. In October 2006, he won first prize at the Adolfo Ventas International Music Composition Competition in Amposta with his arrangement of this same work. He earned his master’s degree in soundtrack composition and television music from the University of Southern California.

Today's edition of Brass, Reeds, and Percussion features transcriptions of the overtures to four of Giuseppe Verdi's less well-known operas. And this gives us an opportunity to talk about the cimbasso, which was Verdi's preferred bass brass instrument. A cimbasso is a bass trombone operated with keys instead of a slide. That makes it easier to play fast passages. And it's more bass than the bass trombone with a slide.

Cincinnati is known as the Queen City of the West from when Ohio was the western part of the United States. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow even refers to the city by that name in one of his poems. So today's edition of Brass, Reeds, and Percussion opens with the "Queen City March," written by a musician and boilermaker named William H. Boorn who lived from 1906 to 1959. Brass, Reeds, and Percussion thereby salutes one of the one-hit wonders of the wind-band world—since this is just about the only composition Boorn is known by.

Ferdinand David was a German virtuoso violinist and composer who lived from 1810 to 1873. His life is connected to that of Felix Mendelssohn in several ways. First he was born in the same house in which Mendelssohn was born. He was the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra while Mendelssohn was the conductor. David gave Mendelssohn technical advice while Mendelssohn was composing his Violin Concerto in E minor.

Frederick the Great (1712-1786) was king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, the longest reigning Hohenzollern monarch. He took Prussia from a weak military power to one of the five major powers of Europe. he was not only a significant military leader, but also a social reformer, ending the practice of torture in his kingdom. He was also a musician, taking flute lessons from none other than Johann Joachim Quantz. And not only did he play music, but he also composed music, especially marches for his army.

In recognition of Bastille Day on July 14, this edition of Brass, Reeds, and Percussion features French music. The turning point of the French Revolution is considered July 14, 1789, the day the Bastille was stormed. The Bastille was a prison and armory in the center of Paris and was considered a symbol of the French king's abuse of power. Every July 14, the French celebrate Bastille Day with one of the oldest regular military parades in Europe and with the president of France reviewing the troops and bands, of course.