Description

Gerald Marks & Seymour Simons – All of Me

George Gershwin – Summertime

Jimmy Campbell / Reg Connelly / Harry M. Woods – Try a Little Tenderness

Felix Rigg – Kiambu

Edgar Sampson – Stompin’ at the Savoy

This tenth (and, to date, final) volume of arrangements for brass quintet features four classic songs from the Great American Songbook, plus an original tune that I wrote to represent the bebop era of the 1940s and early 1950s. In penning these arrangements, I have tried to ensure that all five instruments have their ‘moments in the sun’: if not always in each song then certainly throughout the volume itself, which contains a variety of styles and tempi. The collection opens with All of Me – a perennial favourite with audiences and performers alike. The Gershwin classic Summertime follows (has there ever been a more popular jazz song than this?) Next comes Try a Little Tenderness, a beautiful but perhaps neglected ballad that, for me, always (and incongruously) brings to mind the opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. Before a final nod to the traditional jazz era in Stompin‘ at the Savoy, you’ll find my aforementioned bebop tribute, Kiambu, which refers to a lively suburb of Nairobi, near where I live.

The arrangements are very much designed for public performance: whether as amusing novelties/encores within a concert dominated by more serious music, or perhaps as background music for an event. I hope that brass players of all standards enjoy these arrangements, which demonstrate the sheer beauty of melodic and harmonic invention within the genre.

Felix Rigg

Parts included:

  • Score
  • Trumpet 1 in B-flat
  • Trumpet 2 in B-flat
  • Horn in F
  • Trombone
  • Tuba