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Facebook With many hours of train travel last week, I picked some great new music to listen to. One recording that stood out the most was Oompah Suite: Sweets for Horn & Tuba with James Wilson, former Principal Horn of The Florida Orchestra and Jay Hunsberger, Principal Tuba of the Sarasota Orchestra.
First, we need to take a look at this album cover, because in the world of classical music, even the big orchestras and soloists have album covers that are mostly generic, poorly designed, and lack artist direction of what the goal was for the CD. But, thankfully that does not apply in this case! Take a look at the cover yourself, with the play on words, layout and artwork it says a lot about the CD, but I will let you interpret all the different meanings on your own.
As usual, you would expect the playing by Jay and James to be great, but in this case you would be wrong. Their playing is extraordinarily great. I really don’t like to talk about technical details like intonation, blending, and technique, but it really stands out on this just how well they play together in all registers, dynamics, and styles. Also, the recording engineer did a fantastic job. Horn and Tuba are difficult instruments to record, and require artistic direction from the players because microphone placement for these instruments completely changes the sound and atmosphere of the music. It is clear they knew exactly the sound and atmosphere they wanted.
The choice and order of the music is fantastic. It really leads you on a journey throughout the entire CD, making it a pleasure to listen through in one sitting. This is something that few recordings can do for me, as it seems many musicians today make a cd for the sake of making one, and do not clearly think through the artistic direction of the project.
As the title suggests, these are compositions that are “sweet,” i.e. fun pieces to play and listen to, and three of them are actually Suites. Jan Bach's Oompah Suite which is a duet for Horn and Tuba, really stands out as the staple on this CD, it is a tremendous composition and I find myself going back to listen to it again and again. With this piece Jay and James don’t ask for your musical attention, they grab your attention and won’t let you go until the last note has finished. It is impressive the amount of energy Jay and James put into this piece. After listening to it the first time, I actually forgot for a moment it was a Duet. The amount of information, colors and characters in the music they are giving you makes you feel like you are listening to a large ensemble of musicians playing with conviction.
A couple of times I wanted the music to be more free, rubato, rustig, etc. during the two Suites by Alec Wilder, even if that would be out of character in this case. While pianist Yun-Ling Hsu also plays fantastic, I felt that occasionally she was trying to stay out of the way and accompany Jay and James, as opposed to playing together as a trio with Jay and James during the Alec Wilder Suites and the Divertimento by Trygve Madsen. This was only something I thought about after listening to the entire CD several times. I'm pretty excited to find a CD of brass music, and can only find a small detail/personal preference like that to want differently!
The Ken Bits by Paul Basler is equally fantastic, a fun "intermezzo" in between Madsen's Divertimento and the Suite by Wilder, depicting the various aspects of Kenya.
The last piece on the cd is Dance of the Ocean Breeze by Roger Kellaway, and I can’t think of a better composition to end with. It really brings to a close the journey Jay and James have taken you on in the past hour. I won’t spoil it for you with details, I want you to discover on your own and fall in love with it like I did.
Big congrats to Jay Hunsberger, James Wilson and Yun-Ling Hsu for putting together such a fantastic project. The amount of energy in the music, and artistic direction and programming make for a CD I will be reaching for time and time again. It isn't very often I get so excited about a CD of brass music.
It doesn’t matter what instrument you play or what your taste in classical music is, this is a CD you need to have, you are really missing out if you do not listen to it. This is the kind of direction successful Classical music recording is heading in, and is a great example of the kind qualities you should be investing in on your recording projects. Also, I ordered this CD on pre-release and it came in the mail with a personal thank you note. I hope you remember that when you release your own CD.
As it is now, this is not available on iTunes. If you live in the EU and want this cd, email me and I will figure out the lowest shipping cost to get it to you: TheStoryBehindTheMusic @ gmail.com.
Otherwise I recommend you buy it here: Allegro Music
-John William Banther is a musician living in the Netherlands-
