Gabrieli —National Brass Ensemble (Oberlin Music 1504)
The National Brass Ensemble is comprised of twenty-six of the finest brass players in major orchestras across the US. Gabrieli, featuring the NBE, includes 15 pieces from the Italian composer’s highly influential Sacrae Symphoniae (1597), arranged for this ensemble by San Francisco Symphony trombonist Tim Higgins, and the debut of Music for Brass, a new work by celebrated film composer John Williams. The inspiration for this production comes from an historic, Grammy Award-winning recording, The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli, featuring the legendary brass ensembles of the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, long admired as the definitive modern performances of Giovanni Gabrieli’s works. Cleveland Orchestra Principal Trumpet Michael Sachs helped organize this new project, contributed to the program notes, and performs with TCO colleagues Richard King, horn; Massimo La Rosa, trombone; Yasuhito Sugiyama, tuba; and Paul Yancich and Marc Damoulakis, percussion. Mr. Sachs even does a bit of conducting!
Featured Thu 1/14, Thu 1/28 (originally featured in October 2015)