[light music] NARRATOR: Support for "Sounds Around Town" is provided in part by the Clarence E. Beyers Music Performance Fund of the Erie Arts Endowment, Erie Arts & Culture, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency, National Fuel, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for coming out.

My name is Ken Heinlein and I am not the music director of the Erie Philharmonic, I am actually the tuba player.

So, in a section of people who sit in the back of the orchestra, I sit in the back of them, but I am very proud to be out in front and working with my colleagues this week.

Now, the brass have a very important job in the orchestra; we, in the back, wait until the moment of greatest emotional impact, and we reserve our beautiful sound until that happens.

But what we don't do is play that many melodies, we really don't get those opportunities in the major orchestral canon, and so what we wanted to do was put together a brass ensemble so that you can hear us flex some of those musical muscles here.

Our first piece we'd like to play for you tonight is by Ray Premru, an American trombonist who lived from 1934 to 1998.

He was born and raised around Rochester, New York, and eventually moved to London where he played in the Philharmonia Orchestra.

He was a session musician, and he can be heard on the "Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.

He was also a member of a group called the "Philip Jones Brass Ensemble."

And for that group, he wrote this next piece.

The piece originally was called "Divertimento," it was written in 1976 and originally had nine movements.

He published five and titled it "Five Movements From Divertimento" because titles are hard.

We present to you here tonight, three of the five movements from Divertimento.

The first: "Of Knights and Castles."

The second: "A Tale From Long Ago."

And the third: "A Petite March."

[bright horn music] [gentle horn music] [upbeat horn music] Our next piece is a Sousa march.

John Philip Sousa actually wrote this piece for a competition.

The Washington Post was trying to find their new theme march and Sousa submitted this in the contest and won.

You'll be hearing lots of Sousa marches tonight, but this is the first, "The Washington Post March."

[upbeat horn music] [audience clapping] All right, so we're gonna do a bit of a setup change for this next piece, and that's because we're going back in time just a little bit.

This next piece is called "Sonata pian' e forte."

So the idea here is that this is one of the first pieces that actually used written dynamics.

So, as the name cleverly suggests, it's a sonata, this is as opposed to say a toccata, which would be played by touch, so something on the keyboard.

This is not a cantata, something that would be sung, this is a sonata, so it's something that would be played.

And it's "Pian'e Forte," in other words, soft and loud.

So literally a piece that is played that has both loud and soft dynamics as you go.

So this piece was written in, sorry, check my date.

Yes, 1597.

We found one piece that was used dynamics before this, but this is certainly one of the first.

So this is for two separate choirs; one choir over here, and one choir, appropriately socially distanced over here, and they play back and forth to each other in the original version of stereo sound experimenting with this brand new idea from before 1600 of sometimes sometimes pian', sometimes forte.

This is Gabrieli's "Sonata pian' e forte."

[light horn music] [audience clapping] You almost feel like you're in San Marco's Cathedral in Venice, right?

So this kind of highlights one of the things that's so exciting about playing a brass instrument.

I have to say there's something very visceral about the power of the loud sounds that you can get on a brass instrument.

It's tremendously exciting, and we're so happy to be sharing that with you today.

So our next piece, we go back to Sousa and his many marches.

Sousa actually served in the United States Marine Corps, and he eventually became bandmaster of the Marine Corps Band, the top band, which after his time became known as "The President's Own."

So during his time in the Marine band, he wrote a march for that band and he named it after their famous motto, which of course translates to "always faithful."

Our next march for you is the John Philip Sousa's "Semper Fidelis."

[upbeat music] [audience clapping] So you may be thinking there's no way all these pieces were originally written for brass, and you'd be right.

So, the Premru was written for this exact ensemble, and the Gabrieli was written something pretty close; brass instruments weren't technically made out of brass yet when that was written, but there was still the general buzz idea going on so we'll count it.

But all of these other pieces are what we call transcriptions.

In other words, we're taking music from place A and moving those notes into the brass section.

This is especially true for our next tune.

In 1855, a book was published called "The Ancient Music of Ireland," and in there, there was a tune, or in other words, an air that was collected by one Jane Ross.

She collected this tune in County Londonderry, Ireland, and therefore called it "Londonderry Air."

Now, the tune was beautiful, immediately popular, many settings of lyrics to this same tune, but it wasn't until 1913 that the lyrics to "Danny Boy" were set to this tune.

After that became very popular, composer Percy Grainger set this piece for band.

And it is from that transcription of the song that this brass arrangement is written.

So brass arrangement comes from band arrangement comes from song, comes from tune, comes from Irish countryside.

And we find ourselves all the way here.

I just wanna mention, I'm very proud that we have a tremendous number of American composers on the program tonight, and I recently found out that Percy Grainger counts.

Though we think of him as being Australian, he actually immigrated to the United States and served in World War One as a military bandmaster in the United States armed forces.

So this is an arrangement of Percy Grainger's "Danny Boy."

[gentle horn music] [audience clapping] So our next piece, we're back to Sousa marches, this next one is "El Capitan."

So, Sousa didn't just write marches, "El Capitan" was Sousa's first successful operetta, and it originally ran in Boston and then moved to Broadway where it ran for 112 performances.

This march is built from some of the major themes of that operetta, and so it ends up kind of being a really quirky, interesting and fun little march.

[upbeat music] [audience clapping] So I mentioned that I've made a real effort so far in this program to program American composers, I wasn't totally successful, this Giovanni Gabrieli guy, a bit of a miss, but other than that, I have programmed American composers, but they still all carry one other thing in common: they're all dead.

So I wanted to mix it up a little bit and I'd like to welcome to the stage, the composer of the next piece, David Biedenbender.

[audience clapping] Thank you.

I'm very glad to be here in this beautiful venue for a concert.

I am an associate professor of composition at Michigan State University.

I teach music composition there and we have long and dreary winters kind of like I'm assuming you have here.

And for a little while I lived in Boise, Idaho.

Having grown up not near mountains, it was a really magical place to be for a while because when it gets cold and dreary, as it does there, you drive up into the mountains, above the clouds, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

It's just blue skies.

This piece was written when I lived in Boise, and it is a meditation on that experience, kind of driving out of the rain, out of the clouds, and into the blue skies.

The title comes from EE Cummings' poem "i thank You God for most this amazing day," and you'll hear kind of two mountains in the piece at the top of which you kind of float in this still blue sky.

So, I hope you enjoy.

I want to thank the musicians of the Erie Philharmonic and Ken Heinlein, it's just incredible to work with them, and I hope you enjoy the piece.

Thank you.

[audience clapping] [light music] [light music continues] [audience clapping] [upbeat music] [audience clapping] So, for our next piece, well, I should mention that, of course, was Henry Mancini, an American film composer, his "Baby Elephant Walk" of course, also featuring the horns as the baby elephant section in there.

Our next piece is by Scott Joplin, who lived from 1868 to 1917.

He was a pianist and pioneer of ragtime music, which would become jazz, but wasn't quite jazz yet.

This is "The Easy Winners."

[bright music] [audience clapping] I really, really appreciate you all coming.

It's so much fun to stand in front of my Erie Phil colleagues.

Playing with them in the section is an absolute blast, both figuratively and literally, but being in front is an absolute privilege.

They've dealt with me for this whole tour, all of the various mistakes and all, but still continue to make me look good and so I just want to have them have a round of applause, they're amazing.

[audience clapping] So for our final piece, which is only our final piece if you don't clap, so there could be an extra.

The final piece is the "Salute to the Armed Forces."

Now, this is, you can have a birthday and then you can kind of have a birthday week, I consider this kind of America's birthday week so I wanted to make sure to play some patriotic music while we're here.

Now, the way the "Salute to the Armed Forces" works is that we will play through all five branches of the armed forces, their service songs in turn.

And if you have served in each particular branch, as you hear your service's song, I'd like you to stand if you are able and be recognized for your service.

We really appreciate it.

This country is a very special place to be, to be out here giving summer parks concerts is a very special thing to be able to do.

It's an absolute privilege.

[upbeat patriotic music] [upbeat patriotic music] [audience cheers] [audience claps]