New Music for Brass and Percussion
Metalofonico
New Focus Recordings FCR413 (newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/metalofonico)
What happens when you mix 16 brass players, seven percussionists, electric guitar and synthesizer? A sonic wallop, here courtesy of trumpeter Jon Nelson, University at Buffalo professor and his ensemble Metalofonico, named after Brazilian Dimas Sedicias’ rowdy, big-band dance piece, included in this CD. (Sedicias’ bluesy tuba solo, Raymond My Friend, played by Raymond Stewart, comes midway through the disc, a brief respite from the mostly clamorous goings-on.)
This newly-released CD was recorded back in 2001-2002. Responding to my email query, Nelson explained that it was originally manufactured in 2003 to serve as a limited-distribution promotional item – “I decided last year to put it out ‘for real’ in the hope of giving new life to the pieces.”
Four world-renowned composers are represented – Charles Ives’ From the Steeples and the Mountains, memorably evoking overlapping, reverberating church bells; Iannis Xenakis’ Khal Perr (Greek for “Walking Dance”), a kaleidoscopic compendium of percussion-braced sonorities; Milton Babbitt’s atonal, amorphous Fanfare for Double Brass Ensemble; Giovanni Gabrieli’s noble Canzona XXV, from the first golden age of brass.
The disc’s longest piece, Tom Pierson’s 11-minute Music for a Solemn Occasion, is predominantly slow and introspective. In marked contrast are Nelson’s pounding, jazz-rock Insomnio and his rollicking arrangement of Perez Prado’s 1950 hit, Mambo No.5, Brian McWhorter’s industrially pile-driving Lucre Iota and David Felder’s Two Tuttis – Incendio and Shredder, the latter, writes Felder, “meant to be ferocious fun.” There’s ferocity and fun aplenty on this CD.
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