Brass benefit night

The performance of “brass ensembles” as a special branch of music and performing art, standing at the crossroads of academic and jazz styles, has become another tradition of Yuri Bashmet’s music festivals. This time the audience will not see a “regular” ensemble: four musicians will come together on the stage of the Organ Hall of the Sochi Philharmonic Society to present the public with the breadth and variety of the world of brass instruments.

The concert participants are well-known performers and teachers who have given concerts and master-classes in Europe, Asia and the USA. Native Swiss horn player Olivier Darbellay (soloist with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Basel Chamber Orchestra, professor at the Conservatoire de Lausanne and the Musikhochschule in Zurich) and trombonist and conductor David Brusche-Lally (former soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic, founder of the Aura Consort ensemble, professor at the University of the Arts in Zurich) have already been guests of the Sochi festival as teachers. They will be joined by Daniel Schedeli, soloist with the Bern Symphony Orchestra, Gstaad Festival Orchestra and Lucerne Chamber Brass, and Bill Williams, American trumpeter, professor at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester and soloist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

The concert programme covers the musical spectrum of the Baroque and the present. Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto, arranged by F. Johns, and a medley of Vivaldi themes for tuba solo(!) are interspersed with Poulenc’s Sonata and Trio by Norwegian composer Trygve Madsen; an original piece by Glazunov with Britten’s Russian Funeral; the finale of Brahms’ French horn trio with fanfare pieces by classical American musicians Bernstein and Copland. The concert will conclude with jazz compositions by Todd Thibaud and Pierre Gabay’s witty piece ‘Rest’.