Bountiful Brass: From Bach to Bernstein

mcb

Montclair Chamber Brass: (L-R) Kyle Turner, Don Batchelder, Jeff Scott, Chuck Bumcrot, Anthony Mazzocchi

 

Concert
Sunday, November 4,  4pm
Congregation Shomrei Emunah
67 Park Street, Montclair (map)

Tickets:
Tickets $15 general.
Children under 18 and students with valid student ID, free.
purchase online

or Call (800)838-3006

Sponsored by the Eric Singer Charitable Fund and Congregation Shomrei Emunah

The Montclair Chamber Brass, a quintet of prominent brass musicians from the faculty of Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music, will present a recital on Sunday, November 4 at 4pm at Shomrei Emunah, 67 Park Street in Montclair. This concert is the second annual Eric Singer (z”l) Memorial Concert, a series presented by the Eric Singer Charitable Fund and Shomrei Emunah to honor the longtime Shomrei Emunah member and music lover.

The program, titled “Bountiful Brass from Bach to Bernstein,” demonstrates the eclectic strengths of the modern brass quintet, which consists of two trumpets, French horn, trombone, and tuba. On the first half, the ensemble will play “classical” music from a 500 year span of history, including composers such as John Dowland, Thomas Morley, Giovanni Gabrieli, J.S. Bach, and Johannes Brahms. Audience members will experience the warm ambience of brass timbre from all sides, as the quintet uses the concert space in innovative ways to surround listeners.

The second half of the program shows how Jewish composers of the twentieth century built bridges between between styles, with selections by Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and the prominent film and rock composer-arranger Michael Kamen. In honor of the centenary of Bernstein’s birth, the group will perform a full suite from West Side Story. “It’s a privilege to do what we love to do, right here in Montclair,” said Dr. Don Batchelder, the leader of the Montclair Chamber Brass and Brass Coordinator at the Cali School of Music. “Our members perform all over the world, but coming together for a big concert in this community is really special.” Dr. Batchelder grew up as a Montclair native, attending Montclair High School and giving memorable trumpet performances in the area before attending The Juilliard School. Members of the Montclair Chamber Brass perform with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the American Symphony, and have held many Broadway and touring company positions.

“The brass quintet is great for an eclectic program like this,” he said. Renaissance composers such as the Elizabethans, he explained, often wrote for mixed ensembles of strings, winds, or voices; they expected the performing forces to change as the situation required. Meanwhile, brass instruments are ideal for showing the jazzy inflections of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and the American songbook.

“Bernstein is a special case,” said Dr. Batchelder. “He had all the great “classical” repertoire in his ear, and a phenomenal creative mind, so that he was an amazing popularizer of highbrow music. But he had such a wonderful feel for witty, popular stuff too. I think West Side Story is his masterpiece, even though I love so much of his music. You can really hear both the pop and the exalted side-by-side in West Side Story. There’s nothing better.”

 

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