Brass Cluster

For this post, I have gathered of small collection of music that has caught my interest while digging around. I made a playlist for you to follow along with each one. A couple of these I want to flesh out further in their own separate posts because there's more to learn from them, but here's what I gathered so far.

This first piece is called "A Song for Japan." It was composed by Steven Verhelst as a response to the tragedy that struck Japan with a giant earthquake and a tsunami back in 2011. He also used it as an opportunity to create awareness and charity funds for the people affected. If you look it up there are hundreds of recordings over the years all over the world. Verhelst originally wrote it for trombone but made various versions for other instrumentations such as brass ensembles, quintets, wind bands, and more.

A Song for Japan (2011)

Steven Velherst (b. 1981)

Tokyo Brass Symphony

The next is the "Princess Kaguya Suite" composed by Keiko Takashima. When talking about how this piece came to be, Takashima said that while looking at an exhibit painting of princess Kaguya and the bamboo cutter, it inspired her to write a piece and TINTS trombone quartet and their playing was what filled her mind staring at the painting. TINTS approached Takashima to compose a piece for their 10th anniversary concert and it felt like the stars aligned for this project to happen. This piece has narration to go along it goes through the story of the bamboo cutter and princess Kaguya in between each movement.

Princess Kaguya Suite for Trombone Quartet (2013)

Keiko Takashima (b. 1962)

Trombone Quartet TINTS and Rikako Unno as Narrator

The third piece is pretty new. It's called "A Woman's Choice for Brass Quintet and Spoken Word." This was composed by Shanyse Strickland who has been getting her name around recently as a composer. She is a hornist who can also play some killer flute. I met her during my undergrad while she was getting her artist diploma. She loves playing jazz horn which is a niche in horn playing that needs representation. Because this piece is brand new, I don't know a whole lot about how it came to be so I'll just share some thoughts instead. I love how the brass quintet either supports the spoken word or tells the story through the sounds and melodies. It feels like even without the spoken word I could still infer a lot of what is being conveyed through just the music and I think that is really neat. I feel there was a lot of thought put into how to convey the emotions of the spoken word. 

A Woman's Choice for Brass Quintet and Spoken Word (2025)

Shanyse Strickland (b. 1991)

Trumpet 1- Theresa May

Trumpet 2- Lessie Vonner

Horn- Shanyse Strickland

Trombone- Lauren Rudzinskas

Tuba- Stephanie Ycaza

Spoken Word- Candice Walker 

To switch gears to a more light-hearted piece, I wanted to end on "Bayou Boardwalk" and "Chasing Prey" by Gina Gillie. It is one of the movements from Gillie's piece "Scenes from the Bayou." This piece is a collection of short movements that each represent the scenery and times of New Orleans. What eGALitarian Brass decided to do was take a couple of the movements from the piece and try to find places in New York that they felt fit. For someone who grew up in New York, this was right up my alley and I enjoyed seeing the areas they chose. There is a recording of the entire "Scenes from the Bayou" online by Black Bayou Brass on James Boldin's YouTube channel since he is the one who commissioned it, but I wanted to share these in particular cause the group interested me. Feel free to go check out the entire piece if you have the chance it's really nice! I'll leave a link for the other recording here.

Bayou Boardwalk and Chasing Prey movements of Scenes from the Bayou

Gina Gillie (b. 1981)

eGALitarian Brass Trio