The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Sound the trumpets! Brass Fest 4 is this Saturday and Sunday at the UW-Madison

By Jacob Stockinger

A fanfare is in order!

By the fourth year, an event has certainly become a tradition to look forward to and to follow.

So it is with Brass Fest IV, which will take place this Saturday and Sunday at the University of Wisconsin’s Mead Witter School of Music.

The activities will fill two days with workshops, master classes and concerts.

Music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” will be featured, along with many contemporary composers and arrangers.

Many of the events, including the big Saturday night concert at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

The big Sunday afternoon concert at 2:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, with both brass quintets plus students, costs $15 for adults and $5 for non-School of Music students. A post-concert reception to meet students and other performers is included. (Below are students rehearsing at Brass Fest 3.)

The special guest this weekend is the Beaumont Brass Quintet from Michigan State University (below). Members are Ava Ordman, trombone; Corbin Wagner, horn; Alessandro Bonotto, trumpet; Philip Sinder, tuba and euphonium; and brass area chair; and Justin Emerich, trumpet.

The Beaumont Brass Quintet has recorded a CD of Christmas music for Naxos Records. See the YouTube video at the  bottom.

Also appearing with the Beaumont is the UW-Madison’s own Wisconsin Brass Quintet (below, in a photo by Michael R. Anderson). Members, from left, are: Alex Noppe and Matthew Onstad, trumpets; Tom Curry, tuba; Mark Hetzler, trombone; and Daniel Grabois, horn.

For more information about the many activities, including biographies of the performers, full concert programs, a listing of other events, and tickets, go to:

http://www.music.wisc.edu/event/brass-fest-iv/2017-09-30/