The Birmingham Art Music Alliance will present the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Music’s Brass Quintet in a free concert of newly composed music by BAMA members at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15, in the Samford University Brock Recital Hall, 800 Lakeshore Drive.
The UAB Brass Quintet features James Zingara, and Steve Roberts, trumpets; Martin Cochran, euphonium; Jeff Koonce, trombone; and Scott Robertson, tuba. This brass quintet is unique because it has a euphonium, rather than a French horn, as its alto voice, which gives the group a somewhat darker sound and provides more flexibility in tonal color.
The program includes brass quintets by Mark A. Lackey, including “Three Simple Prayers,”; Bryan Page’s “now does our world descend,”; Monroe Golden’s “Some Day,”; Jan Vi?ar’s “Three Marches for Dr. Kabyl,”; Wesley Johnson’s “Bluegrass Kebyar,”; Holland Hopson’s “Purple Loosestrife (Satellite),”; and Ron Wray’s“Dance like It Hurts.”Also on the program are UAB Assistant Professor of Music William Price’s “Sans Titre VII”for solo trumpet and Fernando Deddos’“Rabecando” for solo euphonium. The program will open with a quintet by Nancy Jensen,“Polaris Fanfare.”
Lackey, originally from Jasper, is in his first year of teaching at Samford University. His “Three Simple Prayers” was written in response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Page is minister of music at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Huntsville. He has adapted “now does our world descend,” a poem by E. E. Cummings, for brass quintet. Golden, of Pell City, composed “Some Day” as a meditation upon the protest song “We Shall Overcome,” to honor the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Johnson is in his first year of teaching at UAB. His “Bluegrass Kebyar” is a multicultural mash-up of bluegrass, bossa nova, big band and Balinese gamelan. Price’s “Sans Titre VII” for trumpet is part of an ongoing series of pieces for solo instruments. Hopson teaches in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama’s New School of Interdisciplinary Studies. His “Purple Loosestrife (Satellite)” is a gestural work that takes its title from an invasive plant that has colonized North American wetlands.
Wray is a clarinetist who teaches at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He wrote “Dance like It Hurts” with quirky dissonance and changing meters. Vi?ar lives in the Czech Republic and was a visiting professor at Birmingham-Southern College in 2005. His “Three Marches for Dr. Kabyl”is a memorial to a unique American lawyer, traveler, musician and railroad builder.
This program is made possible through the support of the Alabama State Council on the Arts and Samford University. The Birmingham Art Music Alliance is an autonomous nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting concerts of recently created art music by member composers and guest composers. Members include composers, professional performers, students of new music and community members interested in preserving and maintaining the long tradition of music as a living art form. Visit the BAMA website at www.artmusic.org/.