Quintet strategies

[hyperbolica]

In addition to my trombone quartet, I'm starting a brass quintet, and I'm trying to develop some sort of direction, with a goal of selecting music appropriate to venues or events we might find ourselves in.

There are several directions a chamber group that wants to gig can take:

- churches as part of worship services
- churches as a venue for public concerts
- local events, possibly through Chamber of Commerce, or local city/county gov't
- local or state government performing at schools
- informal busking in urban centers
- school or college ceremonies like graduations
- corporate parties
- weddings
...???

There is tons of music available for quintet, but it doesn't seem to be well represented on the internet or youtube. If we're going to find ourselves playing mostly churches, that music is fairly easy to select. Sacred stuff, and a lot of classical can be played in that setting. (If you have specific repertoire recommendations, please respond).

But for playing in schools, a lot of the pop type music for quintet that people want to hear is very hoky, even a lot of the jazz arrangements are left footed and square. Is this a "write your own Katy Perry arrangements and hope the copyright police don't hear it" kind of situation? How do you play stuff that engages kids? That's one big question.

Do you really need a drummer to make it in music today?

Or is a brass quintet really just playing easy listening music for old people? You can only play so much Purcell, Byrd and Clarke. We don't all get to play for a music school type audience. Where would you even play a Bozza or Ewazen in public?

Mnozil Brass is brilliant, kind of an evolved Empire or Canadian. But I can't see this group going that direction.

Any insight on repertoire and gimmicks vs audience is welcome...

[Doug Elliott]

Check out www.trumpetunes.com for some good charts.

[mjrochatbn74]

I would amplify Doug's recommendation tor www.trumpetunes.com . Zack Smith is a fantastic arranger. I have had the privilege of playing his quintets and he has arranged for our Nola Brass Band(tpt, tb, ten, bari, sousa and drums). I can't say enough about his charts!

[harrisonreed]

I can give a bit of advice for a BQ --

The pop music is hokey 99% of the time. Where you can win with pop music though, is if you deliberately arrange it to not sound like pop music. You can be a classical BQ or string quartet or whatever, and unapologetically give your rendition of Taylor Swift in a style that suits you. If that means taking "Delicate" at half tempo and playing it like an aria, as long as the kids recognize the tune it'll be a better product than if you tried to play it in a style that the group can't pull off convincingly.

As for legally performing your arrangements, arrangeme.com is through Hal Leonard I believe and they are a great way to get your arrangement approved and even legal for sale if you want. You upload it, they check it out and ensure it's acceptable, you pay, and then you're good from a sheet music perspective. If you want to perform that live, it's on the venue, not you, to pay performance license fees for your legal arrangements. Just give them an accurate setlist ahead of time. If it's a school, they can decide if they want to go the "education exemption" route.

For weddings and churches, I highly recommend getting the Aardworks Wedding and Ceremony BQ book. It is by far the best book I've used for that type of thing, and in more ways than one -- the pieces are for the most part incredibly easy, but they sound SO good. The arranging is just so good in that book. I've gotten more comments like "I didn't know brass sounded that awesome" and "the music was so beautiful" when I've played a good portion of an event out of that book than anything else with a BQ.

"Serious" BQ music is for colleges and academia. You can feature one such piece of your BQ is having a concert, but otherwise I'd avoid it. Look at the stuff Mnozil brass is doing that is virtuosic AND entertaining if you want to go that route.

Above all, especially in reference to "serious" BQ music, don't take advice about what you should play from "serious" brass players, including all my advice. Play to your audience.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

Harrison offers some rather sage advise. Don’t get too sophisticated with your musical library……play to your audience. I have played in a professional brass quintet for 30 years. Some of the “recital pieces” that we have in our library have only been performed two or three times in those three decades. This is because the vast majority of our performances are weddings, receptions, dinner parties, graduation/academic ceremonies and church services.

Some things to add…….

*Default to simplicity. There are some tunes that have dozens of arrangements for brass quintet. It is best to choose one of the simpler arrangements in B-flat major rather than an arrangement in E major that makes some members of the group struggle.

*Some “collection” books are quite good. If your group likes a particular arranger, it might be a good investment to buy a collection of tunes by that same arranger.

*Having composers/arrangers in your quintet is a major plus. Over the years, our quintet has always had two or three musicians in the group with some serious arranging skills. This has led to dozens of pieces in our library that are completely unique to our group. Our “in house” arrangers really know how to make our group sound great and those arrangements have been very dependable selections.

*Make sure all members of the quintet always carry some business cards. My experience has been that there is usually someone in the audience who is planning an event in the future and they might need musicians.

[harrisonreed]

For example:



you gotta be true to your group and what your group can do and what it sounds like, no matter what you play.

I think they pull it off

[mjrochatbn74]

As someone who led a traditional brass quintet and transitioned to a NOLA/Dirty Dozen line up with bari and tenor sax, I would agree that you need to ask what your audience may be interested, what venues that you wish to play and also what your vision is for the group. Most classically trained quintets can't swing well(FH and Tuba are often not well versed in swing feel, not their fault as not exposed in most training) and many available arrangements are extremely stiff. It is critical to have at least 1 trumpet and trombone that can improv to survive in the pseudopop/swing/jazz with quality arrangements. Again, contact Zack Smith or look at www.trumpetunes.com.

[Doug Elliott]

I happened to be playing a gig tonight with Zack.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

We use almost all of the arrangements in Zack’s Christmas Brass Quintet collection every holiday season. The arrangements are fun to play and slightly unique, which makes them very interesting for the audience. He certainly knows how to arrange.

[hyperbolica]

The trumpet site arrangements are pretty good. Their demo groups need a little juice, though...
We've used some Robert Elkjer stuff for quartet, looks like he has a collection for quintet as well https://robertelkjer.net/BrassQuintetPage1.html
Elkjer can get a little out there, his stuff is a little more sophisticated than the trumpet site. But when it's good its really good. Probably a mix of the nice and straightforward and the more sophisticated might be better than going all in on either one.

Yeah, we're going to start simple with churches, and hopefully have enough word of mouth to get some Christmas gigs as a group instead of as individuals. There are some local Christmas festivals that involve local performers, and we might be perfect for that, but we're going to have to put together some recordings.

I was hoping someone might chime in on the use of aux percussion or electronic band-in-a-box type percussion/rhythm section. A small pa system and a laptop might augment things a bit.