Quintifications

1993 brass quintet (D trumpet, C trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba) (CO)

Synthesized recording

For brass quintet.

I wrote Quintifications for my former high school band director, Joe Greco, who inspired and encouraged me to become a composer. His quintet, the Westchester Brass Quintet, gave the first performance at Lehman College in April, 1994.

The spirit of Quintifications is rhythmically active, energetic and playful. An opening motif is fragmented, traded back and forth among the instruments, and reassembled in different ways, winding down in time for the process to start again. This happens three times. After that, we hear the opening again, and go into a coda that goes through a number of false starts leading to a contrapuntal passage and a climactic finish.

Given its lively, fanfare-like character, Quintifications is well-suited either as a short opening piece or as an encore.

A lively piece with unusual instrumentation (the trumpets are in D and C).