Sunday, September 20, 2015

First Concert Preview - Milwaukee Festival Brass


The Milwaukee Festival Brass will open its 2015-16 Season with a concert entitled Origins.   This program will explore our natural desire to look back and examine our past. 

“Studying history, finding our family tree, celebrating anniversaries – these are all ways of figuring out where we come from” said Music Director Mark A. Taylor.  “Whether through personal, institutional, or societal memory, we gain perspective on the forces that shaped us to become who we are today.”  Having been founded in 1985, the Milwaukee Festival Brass recently celebrated its 30th Anniversary.  This milestone event will be one of many opportunities during the performance to encourage a backward glance into the past. 

The concert will include Canzona XVI á 12 by the late Renaissance master Giovanni Gabrieli, whose music represents the origins of idiomatic writing for brass instruments.  Percy Fletcher’s Labour and Love, the first major work ever composed as a test piece for brass bands, as well as Gustav Holst’s iconic Moorside Suite, will also be presented throughout the evening.  Several works from the archives of the Milwaukee Festival Brass music library, recalling the band’s earliest performances, along with James Curnow’s Fanfare and Flourishes, one of the earliest American brass band works, will round out the program.   

The Milwaukee Festival Brass will present Origins on Saturday, October 17, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Lutheran Church, 20275 Davidson Road in Brookfield, WI. As a special feature of this season opening concert, the St. John’s Church Youth Group will hold a benefit supper immediately preceding the performance.  Doors open at 07:15; concert tickets are $12, or $9 for seniors and students, while dinner tickets are available for an additional $8.  Group rates are available.  For more information, please visit the band’s website.

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