Louisville residency album

The Louisville Brass has recently returned from a one-week residency in Hirosaki, Japan. During the week, members Michael Tunnell and Herb Koerselman, trumpets; Bruce Heim, horn; Brett Shuster, trombone; and John Jones, tuba were involved in four performances and presented several clinics for brass players of all ages.

Two of the concerts, on August 15 and 16, were noontime concerts of lighter music, and the other concerts were in Hirosaki’s beautiful Civic Hall on the evenings of August 15 and 17.

On the first evening concert, the Louisville Brass was joined by Falsa, a superb percussion ensemble based in Hirosaki. Falsa members Eri Hidano and Masaya Kudo were the driving forces behind scheduling and developing the resources for the Louisville Brass residency. Of particular note on the Tuesday concert was a major work, Kokuryu-No-Mai (Dance of the Black Dragon), composed by Mutsuo Tsuruta in 1998, and revised for the performance, which was conducted by Tsuruta.

On the Thursday evening program, the Louisville Brass performed with several choirs and a saxophone quartet. They presented the world premiereof an arrangement of a work by composer Shigesi Kimura, entitled Moukko, based on a Japanese legend. Arranger Shoichiro Kawamura conducted the combined adult choirs and the quintet in a performance of that work and several other works by American, Irish, and Japanese composers, in arrangements by Tsuruta and Bruce Heim. A singing and dancing group of children (and a few adults) was featured in three works from Hayao Miyazaki animé movies, also arranged by Heim.

In addition to concerts and rehearsals, the Louisville Brass residency involved clinics with students at the junior high, high school, university/adult levels. The participants of the clinic sessions performed on the final program with Louisville Brass members Tunnell, Shuster and Heim conducting.

 

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University of Louisville School of Music