The University of Nebraska Brass Quintet has performed most of the great repertoire for the genre. For the past decade, the group has dedicated itself to showcasing the original repertoire. Admittedly some of the repertoire is esoteric. Our spring recital consists of repertoire that is among the most accessible in the brass quintet catalogue. This programcovers a great deal of historical ground marking time between Samuel Scheidt through Eugene Bozza and Charles Ives to Michael Kamen andKerry Turner. We rarely perform works written by brass players but it’s difficult to navigate the repertoire without playing Kerry Turner’s music. The Casbah of Tetouan is described by Turner as a tone poem for brass quintet. It is one of his most compelling works. When the name Eugene Bozza is mentioned most brass players associate it with his Sonatine for Brass Quintet. We have found the Suite Francaise to be its equal on all fronts and it presents technical difficulties with musical gratification. Charles Ives was a prolific writer of songs and we have taken four of them adapted by Kenneth Singleton to perform on this recital. The real test of this music is whether it works without the text. The results will speak for themselves. While we have not programmed any pop music on this recital, the Quintet by Michael Kamen may remind listeners of music they have heard before, the piece on this program was commissioned by the Canadian Brass and is a new standard of the repertoire. The reason it sounds familiar is that Kamen was a prolific composer for both film and pop genres. Kamen’s orchestral setting for Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb is one of the most beautiful pop music songs in their repertoire.

The University of Nebraska Brass Quintet is dedicated to the performance of original works and new music for brass quintet. The quintet has been active in commissioning new works and has recently embarked on a project to record the quintet music of Broughton. The quintet tours extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

Free and open to the public.

This performance will also be live webcast. Visit music.unl.edu the night of the performance.