Terry Szor and Charles Olsen, trumpets

Lawrence A. DiBello, Jr., horn

Richard Kessler, trombone

Kyle Turner, tuba

‍

The Saturday Brass Quintet was named a winner of the 1990 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. They were the first brass ensemble to be honored with this award. The quintet was actively engaged in expanding the brass quintet repertoire, and commissioned new works by Stephen Paulus, John Harbison, Richard Danielpour, Anthony Davis and Ned Rorem, among others. The quintet performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, and in radio performances such as St. Paul Sunday Morning, the Dame Myra Hess Radio Concert Series, and the WQXR/Marine Midland Chamber Music Festival.

Among the Saturday Brass Quintet's honors included prizes in the Rafael Mendez, Fischoff, and Artist International Competitions, five grants for residency development and commissioning from Chamber Music America, and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Quintet served as Quintet-in-Residence at Manhattan School of Music and were frequent teachers of master classes working with students at The Juilliard School, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Sheperd School of Music at Rice University.  The Quintet also brought brass chamber music to thousands of school children through New York and New Jersey Young Audiences and through Lincoln Center's Meet-the-Artist programs.

The Saturday Brass Quintet recorded with Koch International Classics.

As part of their Naumburg award, the Quintet received a commission, Stephen Paulus' Concerto for Brass Quintet, that received its world premiere by the Saturday Brass Quintet on its Naumburg concert on April 2, 1991, in Lincoln Center' Alice Tully Hall.

‍

Naumburg Concert, April 2, 1991, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center

Saturday Brass Quintet, 1990 Naumburg Chamber Music Award

Terry Szor and Charles Olsen, trumpet

Lawrence A. Dibello, Jr., horn

Richard Kessler, trombone

Kyle Turner, tuba

Program

Samuel Scheidt: Canzona Bergamasque

J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major (St. Anne)

Stephen Paulus: Concerto for Brass Quintet (1991) World premiere commissioned by the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation

Arvo Part: Pari Intervallo (1976-90)
Giovanni Gabrieli: Four Venetian Canzoni

Richard Danielpour: Urban Dances (1989)

‍

Program Note: Concerto for Brass Quintet by Stephen Paulus

Concerto for Brass Quintet is cast in three concise movements. The musical material treats the ensemble as a virtuosic unit and also features solos, duos, trios, and quartet combination from within the group.

Movement 1 (Dramatic) opens with a repeated chord which expands immediately in duration and intensity. A rapid eighth note section follows in which there is a lively interchange of tense melodic fragments among all of the instruments.

Movement 2 (Pensive) begins with an extended horn solo - a theme which appears in various guises throughout the movement. The somewhat mournful opening is followed by another main thematic idea - a lighter and more playful fragment in waltz-time.

A pyramid of notes ushers in the third movement (fiery). This is again followed (as in the first movement) by a rapidly moving eighth note section. This time, though, the harmonic palette is one of constantly shifting tonalities rather than curt melodic fragments. The pyramid note motif is woven throughout and often erupts into miniature "explosions" of notes which cascade and propel the work to an effervescent close. - Stephen Paulus

‍