Description

George Gershwin – Oh, Lady Be Good!

Herman Hupfeld – As Time Goes By  

Antônio Carlos Jobim – Corcovado

Richard Rodgers – Have You Met Miss Jones?

George Gershwin – I Got Rhythm

This eighth volume of arrangements for brass quintet features another five classic songs from the Great American Songbook. 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. I chose Oh, Lady Be Good! to open this album because it’s a song I often use at the beginning of a jazz set: it sits well as an opener and works in a variety of tempi. Another song that simply couldn’t be left out, due to its everlasting popularity, is As Time Goes By – that favourite from the 1942 film Casablanca. The centrepiece is Corcovado (Quiet Nights), a wistful bossa nova made famous by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz in the early 1960s. Have You Met Miss Jones? is immensely popular with jazz artistes everywhere, perhaps because of the wonderful modulations in the middle section. The collection finishes with a return to traditional jazz and the often-played I Got Rhythm, the chord changes of which form the basis of many another, later, bebop song.  

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