Allegro’s 2025-26 Season Opens with Brass & Organ!

We’re now counting down the hours until our season opens! As of the time of this post’s publication, we’ll be 29 hours away from our matinee performance of Brass & Organ! This is one of my favorite concerts in our season: the full, bright, triumphant timbres of a brass choir and the timeless splendor of a full pipe organ sweep me off my feet every time. 

The most exciting thing about this concert for me is the variety: pieces ranging from a stunning 16th century canzona by Giovanni Gabrieli to curious and exciting modern pieces like Spirals by Scott Hiltzig, which incorporates fascinating rhythmic percussion and sections where brass choir joins in, alternating between clapping and playing, and a splendid brass arrangement of Eric Whitacre’s symphonic work October. As a vocalist, I’ve enjoyed many of Whitacre’s choral compositions, and love to hear his instrumental works adapted for brass; it’s an absolute pleasure! Not to mention Charles-Marie Windor’s Toccata, an absolutely perfect way to kick off our season: the virtuosic nature of this piece is pure power. Peter Omundson’s playing is astonishing, and the combined power of the organ and brass is enough to leave you speechless. 

Working with Allegro, and attending Allegro concerts, you hear and experience pieces you may have never heard before, like Chris Hazell’s “Mr. Jums,” from his work Three Brass Cats, and (speaking only for myself) Confitemini Domino from Drury University Composition & Theory Professor Emeritus, Carlyle Sharpe; or you hear works you may have heard, but weren’t aware of, like the famous choro tune written  in 1917 by Brazilian composer Zequinha de Abreu, later lyricized and popularized in the 1930s. Since then, this mysterious, exciting tune has been arranged for guitar, viola, four-handed piano duet, symphonic orchestra, and of course, brass. 

I love brass and organ; these are sounds that have filled concert halls and performance spaces, sacred spaces, battlefields, grand halls, jazz clubs, and more. They have provided grandiose ambiance for weddings, funerals, and coronations; the earliest iterations of these metal instruments can be traced back to the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and their natural predecessors' roots found purchase even earlier. These sounds, varied and unique, have echoed through time and hearing them today in so many different settings provides us a window into their history.

- Caroline

We are all so excited to start our season! And we look forward to sharing lots of joyful music with you! Read on for the program notes for Brass & Organ, to learn a bit more about the pieces making up our first concert of the 2025-2026 Season with some expanded program notes. 

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Confitemini Domino (1997) Carlyle Sharpe (b. 1965) is Professor Emeritus of Music in Composition and Theory at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. Confitemini Domino is a fascinating piece musically, employing mode mixture and root triads heard particularly strongly in the brass fanfare. For his piece, Sharpe was honored with the 1997-98 Holtkamp/ACO award in organ composition.

Canzona a 12 (1597) Giovanni Gabrieli composed Canzona a 12 as part of his Sacrae Symphoniae, a masterwork whose canzoni and sonatas not only excelled within the genre, but remained unparalleled for decades. Gabrieli’s contributions to the evolution of the canzona and sonata are myriad: his adventurous instrumentations, harmonic textures, and polychoral techniques cemented his work and this piece in particular as vital pieces of musical influence. Canzon a 12 was written for twelve brass instruments arranged in three distinct choirs meant to be placed in different lofts around the St. Mark Basilica in Venice to create antiphonal effects.  We aim to recreate this effect by placing the three choirs, composed of 2 trumpets and 2 trombones, 2 trumpets and 1 trombone, and 1 trumpet, 2 French horns, 1 trombone, 1 bass trombone across the front of the Sanctuary.  

Mr. Jums (1980) This piece by Chris Hazell is the third and final movement in his work Three Brass Cats, with each movement named for one of his beloved feline friends. This short movement memorializes Mr. Jums. Of the piece, Hazell had this to say: “Some years ago I had four cats in the house -- all were strays and decided that I was a soft touch when it came to free board and lodgings, so instead of moving on, they all decided to stay. Sadly they have all now gone to the great cattery in the sky. However, at the time they were around I was asked to write some pieces for a brass group (The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble). What should I write about? Well, I've always liked writing about the people and places around me (they appear in a lot of my music) so I thought ... I know, my cats. These days I don't have any cats as I travel around a lot with my work, but it's nice to think that they're still with me in the music.” The other two movements in the work are titled “Black Sam” and “Borage.” Three Brass Cats is one of three feline-themed sets by Hazell. 

October (1998/2018) With his symphonic, choral, and operatic works, the continuing popularity of Eric Whitacre's dramatic and evocative music is evident in concert programming everywhere. October, one of his most notable symphonic works, is now adapted (by David Miller) in this bold version for brass ensemble. Whitacre gave some thoughts on the writing of October: “...October is my favorite month. Something about the crisp autumn air and the subtle change in light always makes me a little sentimental, and as I started to sketch I felt that same quiet beauty in the writing. The simple, pastoral melodies and subsequent harmonies are inspired by the great English Romantics (Vaughn Williams, Elgar) as I felt that this style was also perfectly suited to capture the natural and pastoral soul of the season. …”

Tico Tico (1917/1993) Originally titled “Tico-Tico no fubá” (Brazilian Portuguese) or “Sparrow in the Cornmeal,” this piece was a choro, a song form that typically shrugs off misfortune with good humor, good tunes and fast tempos, and has been widely used in popular culture. “Tico Tico” has an emphatically syncopated rhythm and has been arranged for every instrumentation imaginable – from guitar to full symphonic orchestra, with performances from the Vienna Philharmonic, the Utah Symphony, Romani jazz guitarist Joscho Stephan and classical guitarist Nadia Kossinskaja, a four-hand piano duet, and Italian violist Marco Misciagna in 2024. This tune has been featured in over 20 films between 1942 and 2020. 

Spirals (2005) Scott Hiltzik’s catalog of over 800 original compositions seamlessly integrate the classical tradition of the great composers, jazz, musical theater, rhythm and blues and world genres, mixing them together to create his uniquely beautiful sound. Hiltzig’s composition “Spirals” appears on the 2012 Grammy-nominated Bay Brass recording Sound The Bells!, a CD of new works for brass by American composers which includes pieces by John Williams and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Toccata from Symphony No. 5 (1879/2009) Craig Garner takes Charles-Marie Widor’s most famous piece and sets it marvelously for organ and brass; these two massive sounds support one another rhythmically and melodically, closing our first concert of the season with a festive, exhilarating expression of joy! The Toccata is the fifth movement in Widor’s Symphony No. 5, and is often referred to as just “Widor's Toccata.” Its fame in part comes from its frequent use as recessional music at festive Christmas, Easter, and wedding ceremonies. Following Widor's example, other composers adopted this style of toccata as a popular genre in French Romantic organ music, including notable examples from Eugène Gigout, Léon Boëllmann, Louis Vierne, Henri Mulet, and Marcel Dupré.