Wiki Category: Brass Quintets that feature female brass players

United States

Jonathan Bhatia, trumpet
T. J. Tesh, trumpet
Natalie Brooke Higgins, horn
Timothy Dueppen, trombone
Clayton Maddox, tuba

Biography

Described as “the only name for music innovation” by Martin Hackleman, formerly of the Empire and Canadian Brass, the Alias Brass Company, founded in 2013, is a collaboration of five uniquely talented artists and educators from across the nation. The Alias Brass Company’s performances are comprised of standards and original compositions, along with concepts that blend virtuosic musicianship with a high level of entertainment. From Baroque and Classical, to Jazz and Pop, the Alias Brass Company’s shows are “a sure-fire hit; chamber music of the future with something for everyone!”

​The Alias Brass Company demonstrates their artistic range with an array of different shows that take audiences on an emotional journey by combining diverse elements of classical music, modern pop-culture, and all things in between to create an experience that is both engaging and exciting. Receiving critical acclaim for being captivating, diverse, and innovative, Alias Brass continues to dazzle audiences across North and South America.

Committed to promoting an image of music that is inclusive, the Alias Brass Company strives to fulfill their mission of ensuring that music remains sustainable and thriving in today’s society by presenting works that represent a variety of global styles, genders, and cultures. Through setting an example that powerful music can be created by and for anyone, Alias creates a gateway into classical music for future musicians and music lovers alike.

Members of the Alias Brass Company are true champions of music education dedicated to inspiring the next generation through wide-reaching and relevant workshops for young audiences. Alias is active throughout the school year providing clinics, master classes, and demonstrations to young musicians and non-musicians alike, focusing on innovation, creativity, technique, and expression through music.

No stranger to the international stage, the Alias Brass Company has performed at such venues as the Banff Centre for the Arts Summer Music Concert Series and the International Horn Symposium in Natal, Brazil. They have also been highlighted as featured artists at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Alias has been awarded professional residencies at the Rafael Mendez Brass Institute in Denver, Colorado and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada. The ensemble has performed countless concerts throughout the United States and Canada, touring extensively in such areas as the Pacific Midwest, Midwest, Texas, Georgia, California and Missouri on such concert series as the Singletary Center Concert Series and Trinity Concert Series among others. Additionally, they have performed and given masterclasses across the United States as performers on the Allied Concert Services roster.

– from the Alias Brass website

Recordings

• 2023 – Prism

Alias Brass website

Germany

Ensemble Schwerpunkt website

Recordings

• 2011 – Preisträgermusik
• 2014 – In Good Company
• 2018 – Schwerpunkt
• 2022 – Iannis Xenakis: Eonta

Group Biography

Already with dozens of new works, created in close collaboration with some of the most innovative composers of our time, Ensemble Schwerpunkt’s goal is to expand upon the conventional tonal and instrumental possibilities of the brass repertoire.

Founded in 2009 while studying at the HMTM Hannover, the ensemble quickly established itself by winning the first prize at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Competition in Berlin in 2012 and the International Jan Koetsier Competition in Munich in 2013. They then went on to complete a specialised contemporary chamber music Master’s Degree in Basel.

In its early years, the ensembles’ programmes strived to promote existing works from recent decades, while also starting to commission new pieces. This synthesis culminated in their first CD, “Schwerpunkt,” released in 2019, with seldom-before recorded pieces from Benedict Mason, Pascal Dusapin, and Sofia Gubaidulina, as well as new works from Vassos Nicolaou and Jarkko Hartikainen.

Numerous collaborations with composers have led to projects with Vito Žuraj, Bernhard Gander, Richard Ayres, Benedict Mason, Vassos Nicolaou, Zaneta Radzewka, Johannes X. Schachtner, Mike Svoboda, and countless others. They have also commissioned and premiered works from most of the aforementioned composers. Their second CD, featuring brass works by Iannis Xenakis and in conjunction with WDR and Bastille Musique, will be released this fall.

Their performances and recordings have been broadcast on nearly all major German radio networks and they have been featured in such festivals across Europe as SWR’s Jetztmusik, die Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Tage der Neuen Musik Bamberg, the Transart Festival, Musik der Zeit, Die Niedersächsische Musiktage, Musik21 Festival, Klangbrücken Festival, Time of Music (Musiikin aika), Ars Nova, aDevantgarde, Unerhörte Musik, and the German Radio’s (DLF) Forum Neue Musik, among others.

United States /

Mirari Brass Quintet Website

Personnel

Joe Cooper, trumpets
J. Peyden Shelton, trumpets
Katy Ambrose, horn
Sarah Paradis, trombone
Chris Dickey, tuba

Recordings

• 2012 – Spires
• 2018 – Renewed, Reused, Recycled

Biography

Engaging and eclectic, the Mirari Brass Quintet brings a spirit of joyful collaboration and innovation to music spanning many centuries and genres. Commissioners of multiple new works for brass, the group performs a spectacular tight-rope act, balancing intensity with levity and refined virtuosity with pure fun.

Founded in 2009, Mirari has performed extensively across the United States, forging connections with audiences through lively and polished performances. The group has performed and presented in 35 states on concert series as well as residencies at numerous universities including Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, University of Utah, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, University of Kentucky, Ohio State University, University of Iowa, Cornell University, and many more. Mirari has also been featured at a number of major conferences and festivals including the International Tuba and Euphonium Conference, the International Trombone Festival, and the International Trumpet Guild Conference. In 2017, the group made its first international trip to China, performing concerts and presenting educational programs in Beijing, Haerbin, Dalian, and Chongqing.

Since its inception, Mirari has added nearly two dozen works to the brass quintet repertoire, with group members also contributing a number of arrangements and original compositions. Their debut album, Spires, adventurously contextualizes works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, re-imagines jazz standards, and features their commission from Rome Prize-winner and Guggenheim Fellow Eric Nathan. Their second album, Renewed, Reused, Recycled, features music not originally written for brass quintet and was released by Summit Records in 2018.

Beyond the recording studio, Mirari initiated a consortium between numerous universities and The Ohio State University Wind Symphony, which resulted in Clint Needham’s In These Hallowed Halls, a four movement concerto for brass quintet and wind ensemble. Their most recent project is a Chamber Music America Residency grant to partner with Capital Area Alliance for the Homeless and Community of Note based in Baton Rouge, LA.

In addition to their commitment to outstanding performance, the members of the Mirari Brass Quintet share a unique passion for music education and are all collegiate professors of music. The group spends extended time interacting with young musicians through masterclasses, group and individual instruction, and specialized clinics. Through their educational endeavors, the quintet examines all aspects of life as an artist and helps to foster the development of complete musicians. Individually, the group members have been on faculty at colleges, universities, music festivals and camps all over the United States and overseas. As a way to share their knowledge and experiences with musicians and music lovers alike, Mirari created a podcast, Mirari: UNMUTED, available on Spotify and iTunes.
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​As a central tenet of the group, and by their name’s definition, all Mirari members share an admiration and respect for each other as performers, educators, and human beings.

from the Mirari Brass Quintet website

United States / New York

eGALitarian Brass Official Website

Kate Amrine, trumpet
Melissa Muñoz, trumpet
Blair Hamrick, horn
Julie Dombroski, trombone
Heather Ewer, tuba & sousaphone
Shelby Blezinger-McCay, drums

Group Biography

eGALitarian Brass is a classical quintet by day and a brass band by night dedicated to performing and commissioning new works by diverse composers and breaking boundaries of chamber music today as a classical quintet. We prioritize performing music by diverse composers and commissioning new repertoire with an emphasis on music by women composers, who have often been historically underrepresented in brass repertoire. eGALitarian Brass also performs as a brass band, collaborating with Shelby Blezinger-McCay on drums; performing jazz, commercial and New Orleans music. In addition to our performances, we have also presented educational workshops at both Rutgers University and Concept Lab, collaborating with composers on developing new compositions and writing for brass quintet.

​eGALitarian Brass has been invited to perform and collaborate with the International Women’s Brass Conference, New York Women Composers, and Spectrum’s Female Composers Festival. eGALitarian has also presented recitals at churches throughout New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey. As a brass band, eGALitarian has performed throughout NYC at venues including HONK Brass Band Festival, Nublu, The Sampler, as well as private parties, parades and events. eGALitarian Brass is extremely passionate about recording new repertoire and bringing high quality recordings of brass chamber music by diverse composers into the public sphere. We recently recorded and released Cait Nishimura’s piece we commissioned “When the Clouds Break” and Zoe Cutler’s “Fanfare for Some Bad Bitches” and have plans to commission and premiere other new works in the future.

eGALitarian Brass has been awarded several grants over the years to fund our performances and commissions and we are so grateful for the support. In 2021, we received a Chamber Music America Ensemble Forward grant, made possible with generous support from the New York Community Trust, to fund a year of coachings with Eric Reed on our repertoire. We were also awarded a 2021 City Artist Corp grant to fund a free public performance featuring eGALitarian as a Brass Band at a women-owned bar in Brooklyn. We were selected as a recipient of the 2019 New York Women Composers Seed Grant to premiere a concert of music by New York Women Composers. In 2018 we were awarded a Juilliard Project Grant to create a music video project of Gina Gillie’s Brass Trio staged in various iconic NYC locations.

extracted from eGALitarian Brass website

Carrie Blosser, trumpet
Jacquelyn Lankford, trumpet
Jessica Pearce, horn
Lauren Rudzinskas, trombone
Stephanie Ycaza, tuba

United States
Founded: 2021
Website

Calypsus Brass is a professional chamber ensemble performing new works recitals, creating high-level professional recordings for composers, and working with chamber musicians at all levels. The five founding members are avid performers and educators touring around the world, giving masterclasses and recitals.

Calypsus Brass is a groundbreaking musical group founded by five women who earned a doctoral degree in music, the first of its kind. Between them, members hold 5 doctorates, a total of 14 degrees, 3 minors, and 4 advanced certificates in cognates such as pedagogy and jazz improvisation. Calypsus Brass serves as a recording ensemble for composers whose works have never been recorded. Founded in 2021, Calypsus members perform at the highest level of excellence in musical performance and education.

Calypsus Brass is committed to prioritizing recording and performing works of historically marginalized composers to uplift the highest quality of music. To further this mission, Calypsus Brass is proud to be the Ensemble in Residence for Rising Tide Music Press, an organization that publishes and promotes BBIA (Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian) musicians in their 10 years of professional-level work as composers and arrangers.

Because professional recordings can be cost-prohibitive for composers and many composition competitions and calls for scores require recording with real instruments for consideration, Calypsus Brass is committed to recording works by emerging artists. We encourage all musicians to program music by a diverse array of composers so that the music we perform is inclusive of the community we serve as artists. Calypsus is proud to lead by example in this mission with recording and commissioning projects. When premiering and recording works, Calypsus Brass creates a relationship with composers, helping to build their portfolios with recordings that the composers are proud to showcase while providing expert advice and coaching regarding idiomatic writing for brass instruments.

As devoted educators, Calypsus members bring a robust pedagogical background to each masterclass and outreach event. Combining 80 years of educational experience, Calypsus Brass presents specialized masterclasses and clinics on topics including: chamber music, classical, orchestra, and jazz performance, wellness, audition preparation, military and orchestral careers, performance anxiety and psychology, music career development, marketing and branding, arts administration and nonprofit management, commissioning, audio engineering, and intersectionality in the music community.

from Calpysus Brass website

Rebecca Steinberg, trumpet
Olivia Pidi Weiss, trumpet
Erin Paul Ozolins, horn
Sara Mayo, trombone
Samantha Lake, tuba

United States / New York
Founded: 2015
Website

American ensemble Calliope Brass collaborates with the world’s most prominent creatives to build evocative, story-driven concert experiences for a variety of audiences. Inspired by the eponymous storytelling muse in Greek mythology, Calliope Brass (pronounced “Kuh-LIE-uh-pea”) is most known for its innovative approach, successfully expanding upon the more traditional norm of recital-style performances. As a registered nonprofit, Calliope has obtained several grants for performance and educational initiatives since its inception in 2015.

The group’s flagship educational initiative, “What’s Your Story?” debuted during the 2018-2019 season to great acclaim and continues to tour in schools across the country, including auditoriums and classrooms in over a dozen schools across New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. A cross-curricular interactive performance targeted to K-5, Calliope developed “What’s Your Story?” in collaboration with Broadway music director and composer Kat Sherrell (music associate, Hamilton US Tour) and puppeteers Leslie Carrara-Rudolph (Sesame Street) and Haley Jenkins (Sesame Street, The Muppets). Calliope designed the workshop as a customizable performance, tailored to stories students write prior to the performance.

The ensemble also continues to develop story-based innovation for concert audiences. Program-length projects have incorporated documentary film, live actors, guest artists, and original composer interviews to create an immersive storytelling experience. Their first project, a multimedia concert entitled “Portraits of the Underdog” (2015), combined live performance and documentary-style video in exploring subconscious bias, in collaboration with composers David Maslanka and David Sampson.

Calliope Brass also keeps an active concert schedule across the tri-state area, playing a suite of programmatic recitals that incorporate non-standard repertoire and creative arrangements of crowd favorites. Marquee performances include a celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial at New York’s Symphony Space and a 2017 grant award from New York Women Composers, which led to the quintet’s concert premiere of a 5-movement work by Faye-Ellen Silverman. Its upcoming debut album, scheduled for 2020, will have works by composers both past and present, including Emma Gregan, Leonard Bernstein, Dana Wilson, and more.

As a registered 501(c)3 organization, Calliope Brass furthers the role of women brass musicians as both artists and teachers through excellence in artistry and innovation in performance. Based in New York City, their members are among the city’s most active musicians, found playing on Broadway, major symphony orchestras, television, and mainstage acts including Adele, Pink Martini, and Andrea Bocelli.

Recordings

• 2021 – Rose Strewn Course
• 2024 – Second Nature

United States

Stiletto Brass Quintet Official Website

Recordings

• 2013 – Stiletto Brass Quintet
• 2020 – Scarpe!

Group Biography

Stiletto Brass Quintet, formed in 2010, has gained exposure as a leading ensemble with performances that the audience greeted with rousing ovations with Doc Severinsen and the Heartland Festival Orchestra, at the International Women’s Brass Conference, the International Trumpet Guild Conference, The National Trumpet Competition, the Great American Brass Band Festival and concerts in New York, New Hampshire, Illinois, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Oregon. Stiletto features five highly accomplished women from the U.S. with careers spanning the fields of orchestral, wind band, and brass chamber music: Amy Gilreath and Susan Rider, trumpets; Misty Tolle, horn; Natalie Mannix, trombone; and Velvet Brown, tuba.

The group, as highlighted in the August 2012 international brass magazine “The Brass Herald”, reflects timely changes in the music scene. Its energetic and diversified repertoire includes avant-garde compositions written by leading composers of our time, as well as classical and popular works from the Baroque period to Gershwin. Stiletto’s concerts are fun, serious, heart-warming, emotionally intense, and always an audience’s favorite!

– from the Stiletto Brass Quintet website

United States

Seraph Brass Website

Recordings

• 2018 – Asteria
• 2025 – Showcase

Group Biography

Winners of the 2019 American Prize in Chamber Music, Seraph Brass is a dynamic ensemble drawing from a roster of America’s top female brass players. Performing primarily as a quintet/sextet, Seraph Brass also performs as a larger 10-piece ensemble. Committed to engaging audiences with captivating programming, Seraph Brass presents a diverse body of repertoire that includes original transcriptions, newly commissioned works and well-known classics. Seraph released their debut studio album, Asteria, on Summit Records in January 2018, winning a Silver Medal Global Music Award. Seraph Brass is in residency at the Walton Art Center’s Artosphere Festival, alongside the Dover Quartet, in the festival orchestra.

Seraph Brass has toured extensively throughout the United States, China, Mexico and Europe. Featured performances of Seraph’s 2019-2020 touring schedule include a sextet recital at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Miami (FL), performances at the Busan Maru International Music Festival in Korea and a residency at the Interlochen Arts Academy. On the international stage, Seraph has performed at the Lieksa Brass Week in Finland and the Forum Cultural Guanajuato in León, Mexico. Stateside, Seraph has performed as the featured ensemble at the International Women’s Brass Conference and has performed concerts at Sarasota’s Artist Series Concerts, Dame Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago (IL), Gettysburg Concert Association (PA), Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach (FL), SUNY Cortland (NY) and the Jamestown Concert Association (NY). The group has also toured extensively as Allied Concert Services artists. Seraph is on the roster of Manhattan Music Ensemble and G.L. Berg Entertainment. As featured soloists with band, Seraph performed Rick DeJonge’s Prelude and Fantasy with the Rowan University Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Joseph Higgins, and James Stephenson’s Dodecafecta with the Bucknell University Wind Ensemble, under the direction of William Kenny. Many members of Seraph Brass performed with Adele on her North American tour in 2016.

Enthusiastic about education, Seraph has developed strong relationships with Venezuelan “El Sistema” programs in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and has performed fundraising concerts for Play-On Philly! and Bridges: Music Through Harmony. Seraph has given residencies and performances at Stephen F. Austin University, University of Virginia, Fayetteville State University, Montana State University, Hendrix College, Arkansas Tech University, Lee University, Tennessee Tech University, University of Tennessee, Wittenberg University (OH), Eastern and Western Illinois Universities, Penn State Erie, Virginia Commonwealth University, Western Michigan University, Michigan State University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Metropolitan State University of Denver, among others. Seraph offers a variety of entrepreneurship and career development workshops, in addition to traditional brass pedagogy and technique master classes.

Committed to introducing new works into the chamber music repertoire for brass, Seraph Brass commissioned and premiered Wolf for solo soprano and brass quintet from Philadelphia-based composer Joseph Hallman. In its efforts to promote the work of women composers, Seraph has commissioned new works by Catherine McMichael and Rene Orth, both featured on the album Asteria. Seraph also premiered Lucy Pankhurst’s Ouroboros, with euphonium soloist Hélène Escriva, at the International Women’s Brass Conference. In addition to these original works, Seraph also has many original arrangements by trumpeter Jeff Luke featured on Asteria and Seraph Brass Live!

Members of Seraph Brass have performed with such esteemed ensembles as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Musicians from Marlboro, Luzern Music Festival in Switzerland, National Symphony, Brass Band of Battle Creek, Daejeon Philharmonic and Auckland Philharmonia. They currently hold positions in the Richmond Symphony, World and European Brass Association, Louisville Orchestra, Artosphere Orchestra, University of North Texas, Hendrix College, Louisiana State University, University of Richmond, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Shenandoah Conservatory.

Michiko Inagaki, trumpet
Mariko Kondo, trumpet
Miki Sugiura, horn
Yukiko Terukina, trombone
Hinako Kato, tuba

Japan
Founded: 2000
Website

Recordings

• 2007 – With Elegance
• 2012 – With Romance
• 2022 – With You