Brass ’n’ Roll: Brass music in a slightly different light
The joint concert featuring students of the universities of Ljubljana and Zagreb, as well as the Liszt Academy, held on February 9 in Budapest, showed the general public that the notion of “brass band” covers so much more than military bands. The event was proof that brass bands boast rich classical traditions.
The concert featured contemporary works written by the students of the composition departments and expert transcripts of works by French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau prepared by Roland Szentpáli, tuba player, composer and professor at the Liszt Academy. The intention was to prove that brass music has earned its place and role in the contemporary classical music concert scene.
The aim of the joint programme and performance was to showcase the various aspects of pieces written for brass bands, which the general public may at first associate with firefighter and military bands or street festivities. This genre, however, has a much more classical tradition and, in some periods of music history, it enjoyed immense popularity. Professors and students of composition and brass, who participated in the programme, revealed the more sophisticated, classical features of this genre, and showed the audience the wide variety of emotions that can be conveyed as well as the diverse world of sounds that can be created on these “glinting instruments.”
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(photo: Liszt Academy/Andrea Felvégi)
The Liszt Academy and the Faculties of Music of the Universities of Ljubljana and Zagreb have a long-standing professional relationship. The Brass ‘n’ Roll joint project is an excellent example of the bountiful cooperation among the three institutions that are connected by countless professional, cultural and historical links. The programme was part of the Erasmus Blended Intensive Programme initiative and it was led by the University of Ljubljana. Participating faculty members and students worked together in several online courses and workshops, which were followed by an intensive rehearsal period in the Slovenian capital. The results of almost six months of work were presented on three consecutive evenings in Ljubljana, Budapest and Zagreb.
On the concert contributed, under the baton of Roland Szentpáli, the trumpet students of the Zagreb University (Lovro Čutić, Patrik Palić, Luka Halužan, Marko Mumlek, Filip Pavlić, Matej Vukić), horn students (Sebastijan Buda, Gašper Okorn, Žan Zdovc, Sara Hartman) and percussion students (Aleksander Simionov, Inti Pucihar) from the Ljubljana University, as well as Liszt Academy’s trombone students James Wolfe, Gergely Janák, Gergely Kedves, András Dénes and tuba students Nándor Vincze and Jenő Lőrincz.
Liszt Academy’s Composition Department was represented by two students of Gyula Fekete (Tamás Barnabás Bánó and Aurés Moussong), while that of the Ljubljana and Zagreb Universities Maja Čerček (professor: Jani Golob), Josip Prajz (professor: Srečko Bradić), Kristof Strnad (professor: Marko Mihevc) and Sara Jakopović (professor: Berislav Šipuš).