the BRASS PROJECT
Cityscaping
Cityscaping is the culmination of years of effort by The Brass Project to bring engaging, adventurous new music to a wide audience. This debut album features several of the thirty-two works we commissioned specifically for our inaugural season. We’re very proud to finally share this new music with the wider world!
In this commissioning project, we asked our composers to write music they imagined might be performed in a public space, perhaps even outdoors. We also asked that they keep their works short – roughly three minutes in length.
The result is a collection of pieces, each roughly the length of a pop song, which proudly displays the diverse voices of contemporary composers from around the world. Our imagined scenario of outdoor performances in civic spaces hearkens back to an era when participation in town bands and other forms of civic music was a central part of American culture.
True to that vision, our sextet has performed this music in dozens of public concerts across New Mexico and Philadelphia in a variety of non-traditional spaces—public parks, schools, markets, and the like—and we premiered twenty-six of these works in an art gallery concert hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "superb."
The world of new music today is so diverse that there’s a style out there for every taste. We hope to showcase that wide range of compelling genres through this new album. We like to think this program, with its short works, can encourage a fresh mode of engagement with new music—we hope you may even think of it as a kind of sonic tasting menu.
The composers who contributed works to this project are all very accomplished and write with beautifully distinct voices. We’re confident you’ll thoroughly enjoy these brief musical offerings. They may even inspire you, encouraging you to further explore the fascinating worlds of chamber brass and contemporary music.
Available now!