National Brass Ensemble

Part performing ensemble and part educational project, the National Brass Ensemble is drawn from the ranks of brass players in major American orchestras. The group released an album on the major PentaTone Classics label in 2023. The National Brass Ensemble had a long genesis and an ancestor: the 1968 LP The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli, featuring brass players from the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The recording was widely known among U.S. brass players, but it did not result in an ongoing collaboration; the players never worked together again, but when Michael Sachs became principal trumpet of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1988, he began to have conversations with Chicago Symphony second trumpet Michael Mulcahy, considering the feasibility of doing an updated version of the 1968 recordings. Several more brass players became involved, and the result was a National Brass Symposium, held in Atlanta in 2011 and 2012, with master classes, seminars, and concerts. From those events developed what was, at first, called the National Brass Ensemble Project, launched in June of 2014 by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the Green Music Center at California's Sonoma State University. At first, the group had 24 brass players plus two percussionists drawn from the symphony orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. It later grew to 33 and then 36 players, taking on members of the Indianapolis Symphony, the Nashville Symphony, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and the University of Indiana faculty. The project was launched with a concert featuring music by Giovanni Gabrieli, as on the 1968 recording, and a newly commissioned work by John Williams. The same program was conducted by Joseph Alessi and recorded at the Skywalker Sound studio north of San Francisco and released in 2015 under the title Gabrieli on the Oberlin Music label. The project continued with San Francisco residencies and performances by various members of the group, but owing to the complex schedules of the members, the group did not reunite until June 20, 2022, when the National Brass Ensemble presented a concert at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. The conductor this time was Eun Sun Kim, music director of the San Francisco Opera. The program featured works by Richard Strauss, Jonathan Bingham, and Arturo Sandoval, as well as an hour-long arrangement of music from Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle. This program was recorded live, and the results were released on the PentaTone Classics label in 2023 under the title Deified; this was the palindromic title of Bingham's palindromic work.
© James Manheim /TiVo