South Mountain Brass

November 9th, 2009 | 3 Comments | Music |

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.

Tags: Benefit, Performances

3 Responses to ' South Mountain Brass '

on October 12th, 2011 at 6:06 pm

James Singer wrote,

Hello Sir,
Could you please provide me with your program notes from “Die Bankelsangerlieder”?
That would be a great blessing as I can find nothing on this wonderful piece.
Thank you so much!
James Singer
on October 20th, 2011 at 8:28 am

tom wrote,

Sorry, James; the program notes we used came from one of our members, and he doesn’t have them anymore. Best I can remember is that it means “bench-singer’s song,” but a German-English dictionary would have given you that!
on November 16th, 2011 at 9:32 pm

tom wrote,

Our trombone player found this, from the ABQ’s program notes:

This anonymous seventeenth century German work, scored specifically for trumpet, cornett and alto, tenor and bass trombones, was discovered at the end of a collection of vocal pieces published in 1684 under the title of “Die Bankelsangerlieder.” The term “bankelsanger” or bench singer referred, at that time, to an itinerant musician who often performed in the local tavern while standing on benches. The sonata in this case, is not to be confused with the classical sonata of Haydn and Mozart. At this period, it was one of several instrumental forms that eventually evolved into both the fugue and the classical sonata. The earlier seventeenth century sonata made much less use of imitation than did its companion forms, the canzona and the ricercar. The word sonata is derived from the Italian “sonare,” meaning to play or to sound, as opposed to cantata from “cantare,” to sing. This lively work is unusual in the ebullient quality of its themes and even more so in the antiphonal effects produced by the answering back and forth between various groupings of two and three instruments, foreshadowing the later concerto.

Hope this helps!