Instrument: Brass Ensemble

Several of Tokyo’s finest collaborate in successfully delivering a re-opening concert at Suntory Hall

Woodwind and Brass from the Royal Conservatory of Scotland gave sparkling Stravinsky performances of his Octet, Symphonies of Winds and joined by RCS Voices for his Mass.

An interminable evening of self-regarding narcissism doesn't bode well for the supposed future of classical music: luckily, other options are available. 

Brass chamber music may sound like an alarming oxymoron until you hear the warm sound of Onyx Brass, who brought their Tour de Brass programme to Auckland Castle as part of Durham's annual BRASS festival.

What compelled the composer to use this particular ensemble? Why does this musical texture work best for this moment? Is there a better one? Should I be able to hear more of what’s going on right now? Is that sound really coming from that instrument? These and other questions, uncommon or irrelevant in the context of a Beethoven symphony or a Haydn string quartet, were front and center Tuesd

In conversation with Petroc Trelawny at the fourth of the Proms Chamber Music concerts, the 25-year-old Norwegian trumpeter Tine Ting Helseth casually dismissed her ten-piece brass ensemble tenThing’s all-female set-up as “just a gimmick”.

Seven Storey Mountain, the title of Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s autobiography, is a reference to the mountain of purgatory in Dante’s Inferno. It is also, fittingly, the title of trumpeter Nate Wooley’s song cycle – meant to represent “a certain abandon found in religious practice within the confines of a composed work for instrumentalists”.