In the middle of the classical music concert season in 1981, renowned concert flute virtuoso, arts reporter and novelist Eugenia Zukerman wrote a piece for the New York Times about why there weren’t more women superstars in classical music.
Among other things she theorized, it was not a comfortable, natural instrument relationship for women to play instruments that stuck out in front of them, primarily the brass instruments like trumpets and trombones, and the larger brass instruments like tuba and euphonium. Those were naturally and psychosexually phallic male instruments.
It had been traditionally difficult enough for women to find places in orchestras playing more neutral instruments, such as violins, horns, flutes and other wind instruments like clarinet, oboe and English horn. Violins, horns and flutes were played more to the side of musicians, rather than sticking straight out. And clarinets, oboes and English horns were in the same family of instruments.
As the wonderful all-women brass ensemble Seraph Brass, who performed a lovely and vigorous concert at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension on Northshore Drive last Thursday night proved, things have changed drastically in the 37 years since Zukerman wrote that piece.
Women brass players are now well represented in music conservatories and university music schools across the country, as well as in brass sections of orchestras around the world. All six of the women in Seraph Brass hold teaching positions at different institutions around the country. Five played this concert.
They began their program with Jeff Luke’s arrangement of the “Prelude” from Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s “Holberg Suite,” written in 1884. Originally written for piano, Grieg adapted it himself for string orchestra.
It featured trumpet player Mary Elizabeth Bowden playing a piccolo trumpet, which many may remember from the famous piccolo trumpet solo in the Beatles’ “Penny Lane.”
Bowden and fellow trumpet player Raquel Rodriquez also play the standard B-flat trumpet, flugelhorn and cornet.
Joining Bowden and Rodriquez as core musicians in Seraph Brass are horn player Rachel Velvikis, trombone player Hana Beloglavec and tuba player Gretchen Renshaw James.
A second Jeff Luke arrangement, the “Cakewalk Suite” from Claude Debussy’s Children’s Corner, was full of bright humor and delight, as was trombone player Hana Beloglavec’s arrangement of Arthur Pryor’s “Fantastic Polka.
Next came three of the musical interpretations of constellations from Catherine McMichael’s “Asteria,” commissioned by Seraph Brass.
Raquel Rodriquez turned Jean-Baptiste Arban’s “The Carnival of Venice” into a virtuosic tour-de-force of trumpet-playing techniques.
Each of the five got a turn as the principal soloist in the music of the evening, that included Anthony DiLorenzo’s “Go;” Benjamin Miles’ arrangement of “Does the Day Reign,” from Tchaikovsky’s “7 Romances,” No. 6, Op. 47; and two more of Jeff Luke’s arrangements: “Three Pieces” from Isaac Albeniz’s “Suite Española” and a sensational arrangement of Franz Liszt “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.”
As an ensemble, Seraph Brass delivers music both bright and warm, consistently playing with satisfying tone qualities that, when delivered at their skill levels, make brass music endearing.
More events on Ascension’s Friends of Music and the Arts calendar this season can be found at www.knoxvilleascension.org.