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My brass quintet is thinking about doing a concert of music from the movies. Any recommendations on music?

Yes, if you can get any of the early Richard Rogers music arranged for the Canadian Brass in a medium to difficult series, by all means include that. Unless your audience is totally unsophisticated, though, skip The Sound of Music. Oklahoma and South Pacific have some really interesting things to do. If you are able to find anything from On the Waterfront, that would be wonderful music and probably pretty significant, regardless of its source. I have done the Canadian Brass arrangements with my Quintet but have had difficulty finding the On the Waterfront scores.

Mark wrote:My brass quintet is thinking about doing a concert of music from the movies. Any recommendations on music?

I've always liked Bernard Hermann. He scored most of the Hitchcock movies, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, etc. I'll bet a Hitchcock suite would be very cool.

Perhaps it might also be worth considering West Side Story -- ALWAYS great material and quite a challenge for the quintet. Jack Gale did a fun arrangement of this and it's recorded by the Center City Quintet -- available through amazon. Might look into his arrangements in general, since many of them are lasting show classics -- his Porgy & Bess is another fine one. Don't know it, but he also did a quintet arrangement of Music from Titanic [see Robert King] -- good material that goes over well with audiences, and, considering that he had a hand in it, that might be worthy of some consideration.

Bloke had a good thread going here over the summer on this very subject with lots of input. Look up "attn Freak Jury ..." The main idea for the thread is recital music, though NOT of the rag & pops variety. However many people mailed in their thoughts and many of them are worth consideration. A couple of other good threads here in the active catalog are "Your recital music" and "Quintet Library" that may have a few good clues for you.

You could also look into doing some John Williams material from the Star Wars saga -- always good crowd pleasers and widely recognized. Not much in the way of good arrangements that I've seen, so you might have a chance there to do some of your own. But Williams has some very good material for brass that could easily bolster quintet programming. Might also look into Bernard Hermann material -- a GREAT screen music writer, as mentioned by OldsRecording.

If you bent the rules a bit, you might consider something like Richard Rodgers "Victory at Sea", the theme music from the 1950's television series about World War II. There's an arrangement of it through Robert King. Lot of other TV tunes could be found/ developed as well. Depends on what slant you want to put on your show, which era, what themes. Also consider that you might NEED to do some of your own arranging as well. Best of luck.

Here are some suggestions for you:

Movie music written for movies:

Music from the "Right Stuff" (BVD Press)
Popeye Medley (BVD Press)
Mission Impossible Theme (Hal Leonard)
Sunday Traffic - Copland (Boosey and Hawkes)
West Side Story (Music Express) - sort of for movies
Sound of Music (Musicians Publications) - sort of for movies


Music in movies:

Funeral March of a Marionette (Cimarron Music)
Adagio - Barber (Hal Leonard)
Rhapsody in Blue - Gershwin (BVD Press)
Danse Macabre (Les Stallings)
Many Joplin Rags

Music by movie composers:

Quintet - Michael Kamen (Hal Leonard)
3 American Portraits - Bruce Broughton (Black Squirrel)

Copyrights for this type of music are always an issue so you might have to be creative!

These are all available from BVD Press and I am sure several other places as well.

My quintet will be recording a movie music CD once we are back from our tours in the Spring. We're doing a combination of classical works featured in movies as well as original scores. Stuff we'll be recording include:

The Incredibles
Star Wars Suite
Fantasia Suite (Sorcerer's Apprentice and Night on Bald Mountain)
Barber's Adagio
Jurassic Park
Bohemian Rhapsody
Raiders of the Lost Ark
William Tell Overture
and more

Hopes this gives you some ideas. Most of the stuff will be arranged by members of the group (mostly myself and one of our trumpet players). I, too, would love to do some Hermann!

Scott

Hi Mark,
These might appeal to mature audiences:
SUITE, PIRATES OF PENZANCE, Gilbert & sullivan arr. Fen Watkin ( Canadian Brass)
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, Jerry Bock arr. Bill Holcombe.

BBbDave wrote: Please advise when the CD becomes available so I can but one(I just can't get enough brass CDs....I'm just adicted to brass, and the lower the better).

If you are looking for a new Brass CD, check this link out:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... im/tubenet

It is just a great CD with great literature on it!

Try the Gamalon Brass Quintet from Summit records. Great group, great charts, etc.!!!

Good luck with all the mechanical rights Scott. The CD sounds like a great project and count me in for a copy when it is completed!!

Yeah, it's looking like a great project. If anyone is interested in Presidio Brass' debut disc, it's available on CD Baby (and on Amazon soon):

http://cdbaby.com/cd/presidiobrass

Our Christmas disc will also be available on CDBaby in the next week or so. Both discs feature new arrangements for quintet (with some organ on the Christmas disc). Check it out!

A couple of documentaries with pretty good scores, both adapted for quintet:

The Plow That Broke the Plains -- Virgil Thomson
Victory at Sea -- Richard Rodgers

Also, John Wild did a very nice setting of a thing William Walton wrote for Richard III, called "I Would I Knew Thy Heart." Not sure whether it is still in print, but lovely.

As far as I know, there is only one version arranged for quintet. It was done by Picher and published by Manduca Music. It is available on my BVD Press site. I can't say I have played the quintet version, but it sounds like a blast!

Scott Sutherland wrote:My quintet will be recording a movie music CD once we are back from our tours in the Spring. We're doing a combination of classical works featured in movies as well as original scores. Stuff we'll be recording include:

The Incredibles
Star Wars Suite
Fantasia Suite (Sorcerer's Apprentice and Night on Bald Mountain)
Barber's Adagio
Jurassic Park
Bohemian Rhapsody
Raiders of the Lost Ark
William Tell Overture
and more


Scott

How difficult was it to get the publishers' permission to arrange and record. I usually hit a stone wall with requests, particularly Hal Leonard.

Alex C wrote:How difficult was it to get the publishers' permission to arrange and record. I usually hit a stone wall with requests, particularly Hal Leonard.

Mechanical rights for recording are not difficult to obtain, but the performance rights for a new arrangement are a different story. Even John Williams gives permission for recording but not for performance/publication of new arrangements (take a look at the new recordings by Denver Brass and Dallas Brass). There are a number of individuals who will perform the service of obtaining licenses for you. Copycat Licensing is one that is very popular.

Probably no ready to play arrangement for it, but the main title for the TV show Hercules with Kevin Sorbo would make a spiffy brass number -- maybe as a medley with some other stuff.

Amazon sound samples here:
http://tinyurl.com/33vqv3

MIDI file is here
http://www.angelfire.com/co/greekbard/sounds.html