Balkan Brass and Brass the World Over

Many thanks to Professor Manning for showing me the ensembles from all of these links!! Moravian Trombone Choir A trombone ensemble used in Moravian worship services. Jaipur Kawa - Indian brass band. Bollywood Brass Band Gangbê Brass Band - brass band from Africa. Kenny Carr and the Tigers

This post is a little more emotional than any of my other blogs. As I finish this semester, the last bits of coursework of my Master's degree stretching out before me, I've got a lot of feelings going around. Putting it frankly, 2019 and 2020 have been ridiculous years. My dad was suffering all of Spring 2019 and died last April, and this March we saw the beginning of the US wave of a global pandemic. I know we all have our struggles and face hardships, but sometimes I don't know how I've been able to do it. I'm just glad that I have. I was diagnosed with depression in 2014, and correctly diagnosed with bipolar disorder type 2 sometime in 2016. Getting my undergrad and first grad degrees have without a doubt been the toughest years of my life, and it's hard not to reflect on all that as this degree is coming to a close. I've learned a lot about being a musician, being a decent human, and just kind of life over the past 5 years at Iowa. It's bee

Schoenberg's string quartets are some of my favorite 'crunchy listening', so discovering his works for brass was one of my favorite parts of this class. Twentieth-century 'classical' brass writing, with its various influences, and coupled with the developments made in both brass manufacturing and performance, make it some of the most interesting listening out there. Today's post will reflect on various major brass compositions from 20th-century avant-garde composers. One of the pieces that we listened to ages ago in ABEL that I fell in love with was the Lutoslawski Mini Overture. Another that I've performed before, which isn't specifically for brass ensemble, but has massive brass parts, is Hindemith's Symphony in B flat for Wind Ensemble. While at the Atlantic Brass Quintet Seminar, I performed Plog's Four Sketches for Brass Quintet. The performance experience is just as energized as the listening experience is - the chromaticism and ti

Balkan Trafik A yearly 5-day festival in Brussels, Belgium, the Balkan Trafik features numerous artists from around the world. Their 15th anniversary festival will be in April 2021, and their website has the numerous artists that they promote and will have. While this isn't exclusively Balkan Bass, the numerous Balkan arts that they feature often include brass ensembles. Guča na Krasu There's not much available that isn't behind paywalls or in another language about Guča na Krasu Pehcevo Festival of Wind Bands A similar case is true for this festival as the above - except there isn't an obvious video available as well! I guess the moral of this blog is not to trust Wikipedia.

This embedded video is the entirety of my Balkan Brass playlist on YouTube. It's a continuously updated playlist of absolutely everything I can find Balkan Brass related! After all is said and done, I won't be surprised if this playlist has hundreds of videos. !

Above is a recording of Bregovic and his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra playing two of their classics, Bella Ciao and Kalashnikov at the 2012 Sziget (Island) festival in Budapest, Hungary. Goran Bregovic, born in 1950, is a Yugoslavian musician with many credits to his name. He's recorded and performed with a number of ensembles, such as his above Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, as well as Kodeksi and Jutro, two bands he participated in during his youth in Naples and Sarajevo. Bijelo Dugme was his main musical gig for a while, but I have him on Trubatalk here because of his involvement with Emir Kusturica on the 1995 film Underground , winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and because he has a massive output of Balkan Brass music deep in the Youtube algorithm. While this sits somewhat off the beaten path of Balkan Brass, I cannot recommend Underground enough. Make sure you're ready to watch it, and do your reading on it beforehand - it's a fairly dark