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 original repertoire. Admittedly some of the repertoire is esoteric. That’s never a problem as our audience has always come back and we think and hope that they have appreciated it. With that said, we discussed a comment made by our late, great colleague Jack Snider. After finishing a recital that featured the Quintet by Alvin Etler, Jack came backstage and asked us “when are you going to play something we want to hear”?
We didn’t take it personally…he may have been right! The concert "Roll over Beethoven, Tell Tchaikovsky The News" on Monday, November 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Kimball Recital Hall is an attempt to go another direction. The genesis came from playing at commencement ceremonies. We began playing jazz and blues tunes and found that we received a great reception for our efforts. When Dave Hall started playing drums with the group we found that we could credibly tackle more of this style of repertoire.
Last summer we decided to do a full program devoted to some of our favorite classic rock songs. We made this choice with the caveat that we would not do the typical brass quintet treatment of rock music which is to arrange it and play it in the classical style. It works and many groups have made it sound great, but we decided to do record copies. That is to say we wanted to copy as closely as possible the performances that people have come to know via top-40 radio. We found good arrangements and got to work fixing them up to match what we heard from the original recordings. There is one song that we wanted to do that was not available as an arrangement so we went to friend and colleague Tom Larson with hat in hand. He came back with an arrangement of Chicago’s Feelin’ Stronger Every Day that is a knockout.
Other songs featured on the recital are 25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago, The Lion Sleeps Tonight by the Tokens, September by Earth, Wind and Fire, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, I Wish by Stevie Wonder, Hey You by Pink Floyd, Honey Pie by The Beatles, Don’t Stop Believing by Journey, and Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney and Wings.
This project has been fun and challenging for the quintet. It’s not easy to make rock music work with a brass quintet. We think that we have done it. We really hope that you agree! The performance is free and open to the public.