RE: My Book of Quartets for Christmas

[Rick F]

Thanks Wade,

I haven't posted in your threads about this yet, but we have an ensemble (Euphonium (3) / tuba / horn / T-bone) that plays an informal gig every Christmas at a local library. Since the euphers read TC, we're going to try your arrangements this year. There are no trumpets allowed, so the flugel part should sound good on 'bass flugel... or euphonium

Thanks for your work.

[Rochester2013]

Using several of your quintet arrangements in a Church Service tomorrow! Great stuff!

[Rick F]

Good luck. These will not work with octave transpositions, so all parts need to be read down an octave, which will be very muddy. These, again, were meant to be played specifically by the four instruments they were written for and not random groupings. If they sound bad it is not my fault. I hope you can make them work. If I did an arrangement for low voices they all would have SEVERELY different inner voices. These were laid out for an SATB setting only. Again, good luck with the mud!

Wade,

I see what you meant by... 'we might have some voicing problems'. We couldn't play "Christmas Time is Here". Sounded really strange with Euphs playing trumpet parts. BUT we were able to use three of your arrangements very effectively (3-Euphs, Horn, T-bone, and Tuba). These were "Sleigh Ride", "Carol of the Bells" and "O Come All Ye Faithful". Some other stuff we used were from earlier years (Canadian Brass book). One of my favorites that we've done for the last three years is Holcombe's arr. of the "Hallelujah Chorus".

Thanks Wade. Appreciate your arrangements.