Mountains of Brass!
Thursday, May 16, 2024 | 3 PM | FREE
Canyon Theater at the Boulder Public Library, 1001 Arapahoe Ave, Boulder
The Canyon Theater is closer to Canyon Boulevard, between Broadway and 9th Street
Anthony Barfield
Free and open to the public
- BARFIELD | Gravity
- BILLER | Little Piece for Brass Quintet (WORLD PREMIERE)
- EWALD | Quintet No. 3 in D-flat, Op. 7
- MAHLER, arr. DRENNAN | “Die zwei blauen Augen” (“The Two Blue Eyes”) from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
- HENDRIX, arr. Biller | Angel
- TOWER | Copperwave
- CALVERT | Suite from the Monteregian Hills
Daniel Kelly & Richard Adams, trumpets
Lydia Van Dreel, horn
Lucas Borges, trombone
Jesse Orth, tuba
Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony calls for a rather large brass section. The MahlerFest orchestra will use twelve French horns, at least four trumpets, six trombones, and two tubas. This season is the perfect time to highlight our fabulous brass section with a concert of their own. The principals from our four brass sections, joined by Dr. Richard Adams (it is a brass quintet, after all), will present this unique and varied performance.
Emmy-nominated composer Anthony Barfield’s Gravity is based on Langston Hughes’s poem, “Dreams Deferred,” and was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. MahlerFest commissioned the Little Piece for Brass Quintet from David LeRoy Biller. Biller is fixture of the Austin music scene and can be heard playing electric bass on Friday night’s Electric Liederland: Hendrix Meets Mahler.
Victor Ewald, born the same year as Mahler, was a Russian architect and engineer in addition to being a member of an elite group of Russian “Gentlemen Musicians.” Joan Tower, a Grammy-winning American composer, was born in 1938, just three years after Ewald’s death. The New Yorker has called her “one of the most successful woman composers of all time.” Morley Calvert was a Canadian composer whose “Suite from the Monteregian Hills,” commissioned in 1961 by the Monteral Brass Quintet, is based on French Canadian folk songs. In keeping with the theme of MahlerFest 37, the title comes from a mountain range stretching from Mount Royal, Quebec to the American border.