Brass quintet blows away GCSU with wide variety of tunes

The GCSU Bobcat Brass Quintet recently performed a concert at Max Noah Hall with the Oasis Brass Group, based out of Atlanta. The groups performed their program, entitled “Music from the Renaissance to New Orleans” on Oct. 27. The pieces performed came from all of the major musical time periods, including the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th century time frames.

Oasis Brass is comprised of professional musicians and its members have played with several distinguished groups throughout the country. Among the group members is Dr. Maureen Horgan, an associate professor of music and a brass instructor at GCSU. Horgan, who plays trombone for the group and has been commissioned for trombone pieces, was a professional brass player for three decades in Boston before coming down to Milledgeville. She was also one of the founders of Oasis Brass.

Horgan was joined in that effort by trumpet player Jay Davis, an alumnus of GCSU and a high school band director for Eagles Landing High School in McDonough.

“We decided to put the group together and bring that kind of group to the area. (Davis) knew a trumpet player, and I knew a horn player,” Horgan said.

Other members of the quintet included William Stadelmeyer on trumpet, Julia Towner on French horn and Thomas Cremer on tuba. After both groups combined to open with the fanfare preceding the ballet “La Peri,” the groups rotated in playing their pieces for the evening. Oasis Brass performed Mozart’s “Adagio from K 411″ along with Victor Ewald’s “Quintet No. 1 for Brass.” The Bobcat Brass Quintet performed Eric Ewazen’s “Frost Fire” along with Bach’s “Contrapunctus IX from The Art of the Fugue” and Gabrieli’s “Canzon septimi toni No. 2.” The two groups combined and were joined by GCSU director of bands, Dr. Todd Shiver and GCSU brass instructor Chris Probst on trumpet, as they played Michael Kamen’s “Quintet” and the traditional Don Gillis arrangement of “Just a Closer Walk (with Thee)”.

The Bobcat Brass Quintet was spurred off of the regular brass ensemble that was started by Shiver and has been further developed by Horgan. The quintet includes John Hennecken and Tyler Allen on trumpet, Carlos Rodriguez on French horn, Matthew Lane on trombone and Jeremy Dudley on tuba. Rodriguez, a senior music education major said he was thrilled to play at the concert.

“It went very well for only being able to have one full rehearsal with everybody before the concert,” Rodriguez said. “It’s the first time we as a group have been able to do something like that and perform with a professional group, and it was a real honor to be able to do that.”

Horgan said the group members predominately run their own rehearsals and work on their own.

“They did very well. We only ran the opening piece a couple of times, and we only had one full rehearsal. I was proud of (the Bobcat Brass Quintet),” Horgan said. “They are very self-directed and work mostly on their own, and they did a great job.”

“We’re a very self-motivated group,” Rodriguez added. “We really got started up last year, and we’ve done a handful of gigs. Dr. Horgan has really kept us working hard.”

Horgan is hoping that more concerts like this will be able to take place at GCSU.

“It really is great for the students to perform with professional groups,” she said. “We had a couple of generations of players performing, and it was a lot of fun.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 6 2009. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry