FOSTERING BRASS CHAMBER MUSIC
  • WELCOME HOME
  • DOUGLAS ALLANBROOK
  • ALLANBROOK SYMPHONY #5: BR/ABQ
  • DAN PAGET: TWO RAGS
  • SCOTT PENDER': SONGS FROM TEREZIN
  • SCOTT PENDER: FRAGMENTS
  • STARER'S ANNAPOLIS SUITE
David Cran, trumpet----- Sharon Tiebert, horn------Robert Posten, bass trombone------ Wayne Wells, trombone------Robert Suggs, trumpet
Picture

Annapolis Brass Quintet offers farewell concert after 22-year career
Stephen Wigler | Baltimore Sun | April 16, 1993

Saturday evening in Friedberg Hall will mark an unhappy milestone in the life of brass music in Maryland: It will be the last concert of the Annapolis Brass Quintet. The ABQ has been a fixture here since 1971, when five young brass players who had been members of the U.S. Naval Academy Band in Annapolis decided to make a go of it as a full-time brass quintet in civilian life. Their success is well documented. They made more than 15 records, commissioned about 75 new works, toured Europe every year, and concertized in all fifty states, 21 countries and four continents.

 ​Brass Quintet to trumpet ​its finale
this weekend

Phil Greenfield | The Capital | ​April 23, 1993

​After 22 years of distinguished music making, the Annapolis Brass Quintet will take the stage for the final time this weekend.  When trumpeters David Cran and Robert Suggs, French horn player Sharon Tiebert and trombonists Wayne Wells and Robert Posten appear in concert at Key Auditorium Sunday evening, they will bring the curtain down on a pioneering ensemble that has brought the excitement of brass chamber music alive to audiences all over the world.
< BACK to SELECTED WORKS


​Live Performance of ABQ Farewell Concert
Key Auditorium, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland

Recorded by WBJC FM
Tap > on Audio Bar Below 
NOTE: There may be a 10 to 30 second delay before sound begins 
TAP HERE: To View Printed Program
​​
If you would rather listen to a few works selected from ABQ's farewell concert
TAP HERE: To Hear Selected Works
Annapolis Brass Quintet plays its last respects
April 28, 1993 | By Phil Greenfield | Contributing Writer | The Capital
Concert Review ​
Twenty two years. thousands of concerts, 16 recordings, 75 world premieres, and 17 European tours after its inception, the Annapolis Brass Quintet said farewell to its hometown audience Sunday evening with a final concert.  The quintet played before a packed house at Key Auditorium on the campus of St. John's College. 

​The success of such a concert might seem a foregone conclusion to some -- sentiment, adrenaline and all that -- but to a musician, the pressures are immense.  If something should go wrong, where and how do you redeem yourself tomorrow?
​

But the Annapolis Brass Quintet needn't have worried, for its final concert evidenced the same technical acumen and lofty musicianship that have characterized the group's music-making for the past two decades.  

Any thoughts that this concert would be a mere saunter down memory lane were scotched immediately by trumpeter David Cran,  "if you expected nostalgia alone" he told the audience, "then you don't know us well.  We've put together a program that contains music we believe in."

The farewell  fare, in sum, was vintage ABQ: a 400-year anthology of brass chamber music stretching from the Spanish Renaissance through today, with stops in 17th-century, the late Baroque period, and turn-of-the-century Russia along the way.  Even in saying goodbye, the ensemble premiered a brand new piece, the worthy Symphony for Brass Quintet by Michael Brown.

In this final concert three moments stood out for me.
1.  The intimacy and affection with which the players expressed the spiky rhythms of Invitation to the Sideshow composed by Annapolis own Douglas Allanbrook.

2. In Praetorius' glorious Dances from Terpsichore, one had a sense of the quintet members paying final respects to themselves as they interacted in the many different instrumental combinations.

3. Their final selection, Elam Sprenkle's haunting evocation of Walt Whitman's poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry was  performed off-stage, more a closing benediction on the house than an encore.  

Picture
If, while listening to this performance, you'd like to review the quintet's history, TAP:  ABQ LOGO above.


 FOSTERING  BRASS CHAMBER MUSIC
All scores and parts for music performed on this Farewell Concert, as well as the  entire Annapolis Brass Quintet Music Library,  is available for performance and research from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. 
Tap Here For Direct Access to the ABQ Special Collection at Oberlin
< BACK to WELCOME HOME
Proudly powered by Weebly