Tom McGee's Blog

SMB is another one of my musi­cal endeav­ors, a brass quin­tet based at the Wyoming Ave. Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Maple­wood, NJ. This month we’re play­ing a ben­e­fit con­cert for Liv­ing Water Inter­na­tional, a char­ity that works to bring clean water to devel­op­ing countries.

It’s an oper­a­tion that is deeply faith-based, and I applaud their roll-up-your-sleeves approach to improv­ing people’s lives by work­ing on the things that really mat­ter day-to-day:

We pro­vide trained national teams with all the com­po­nents needed to imple­ment com­mu­nity water solu­tions. This includes sup­pliy­ing cap­i­tal out­lay and logis­tic sup­port while the national teams grow to become self-sustaining. We hire local peo­ple and buy local mate­ri­als when­ever pos­si­ble, cre­at­ing jobs and income to fur­ther ben­e­fit the com­mu­nity at large.

This is the kind of “Chris­t­ian left” (though they may balk at a descrip­tion like that) effort I admire.

The con­cert is Novem­ber 22, the rest of the infor­ma­tion is in a press release here.

Pro­gram

Robert Sanders: Quin­tet in Bb for Brass Instru­ments
  Grave, Alle­gro
  Ada­gio
  Alle­gro Vivo

J. S. Bach: Con­tra­punc­tus I from “The Art of the Fugue“
edited by Robert King

Henry Lich­field: Three Madri­gals
  The Shep­herd
  All Yee That Sleepe In Plea­sure
  I Always Loved To Call My Lady “Rose“
tran­scribed by Tom McGee

Claude Debussy: Golliwogg’s Cake­walk from “Children’s Cor­ner“
tran­scribed by Bert Mayer

George Fred­er­ick Han­del: Horn­pipe from “The Water Music”

Anony­mous: Sonata from “Die Bankelsangerlieder”

With pre­sen­ta­tions and pro­gram notes in between. Yes, that’s me as the arranger of the Madri­gals. After we per­form them I’ll pol­ish up the score and parts and post them here.

Oh, here’s the group:

From left to right, Yours Truly Tom McGee on trum­pet; Leah Van Doornik on horn; Jim Buchanan on bass trom­bone and tuba; Stu­art Lip­kind on trom­bone; and Dan Sug­ar­man on trumpet.