Brass Over Bridges Quintet

BRASS OVER BRIDGES AT SPRING LAKE SERIES

Innovative programming is alive at the Spring Lake Village Concert Series, with the usual piano trios and vocal groups upstaged by a recent formal solo harp recital and August 21 by Brass Over Bridges, an all brass quintet.

The short program in Montgomery Auditorium West included works by one of the performers and concluded with transcriptions of three of Ellington’s most memorable tunes – In a Sentimental Mood, Take the A Train and especially Satin Doll.

Surprisingly there was even a brass quintet work from the Romantic era, Victor Ewald’s Number One of four written in the 1890s. Musicians included trumpeters Ari Micich and John Freeman; Sophia Chen (horn); trombonists Esther Armendariz and Sam Wamhoff; and the dynamic tuba playing of Jonathan Seiberlich. Mr. Seiberlich’s instrument sounded wonderfully resonant in the Hall’s famously dry acoustics and was the strong supporting sound of Thomas Morley’s Four Elizabethan Ayers – Fyre, Fyre!; Good Morrow, fair ladies of the May; Gaude Maria Virgo and When lo, by breake of morning.

The audience of 85 applauded the unusual sound of five strident brass, though at one hour curiosity for some was surely sated.