An hour of brassy metal. The sound you almost never get to hear: not the Brass Section, but the five colours inside it.
This Cocktail Hour asked for a different listen: not the massed, projected sound of the orchestra’s brass section, but five similar-and-not-identical wind timbres working at close range. I had to unlisten the distant orchestral texture of Strauss or the attack of Miles Davis and instead hear the brass like a string quartet.
The Cocktail Hour tonight was guest-curated and led by Brent Grapes, Associate Principal Trumpet of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He joined the SSO in 2023 after a decade as Principal Trumpet of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Around him were colleagues from his own section: David Elton, Principal Trumpet and one of Grapes’ teachers; Cécile Glémot, trumpet; Samuel Jacobs, Principal Horn; Scott Kinmont, Associate Principal Trombone; and Steve Rossé, Principal Tuba. They sit together week after week in the Concert Hall and tonight they formed their own chamber style ensemble.
Seeing chamber music up close is always a revelation. The instruments stop being a single brass block. The horn can vanish into the texture or step forward as a singing voice. Trumpet can pierce, turn quietly lyrical, disappear into a mute, or run rapid figuration that is almost woodwind-like. The trombone’s slide makes it also intimately vocal. In a chamber setting the tuba is surprisingly quick: an articulate bass that can carry a line, spell out harmony at speed, or drop into a Latin groove. You are also near enough to watch the kit as well as the music: mutes, mufflers, the small adjustments that change a colour mid-phrase.
Calls and Echoes (1986) by Verne Reynolds is a modern piece that still names the old signalling function of horns: hunting calls, military fanfares, and the reply that comes back from somewhere else. Reynolds wrote it in the mid-1980s for the Eastman trumpet pair Barbara Butler and Charles Geyer. Grapes said Elton had first introduced him to the work and tonight they played it to each other.
What surprised me was the theatre of it. Elton walked off the Utzon Room stage, around the corner into the entranceway, so the two players were trading lines across the building itself. The room became the resonator. The piece is one continuous movement, not numbered sections, but the arc is clear: together, then apart; long notes; chase; distance; return. The lines draw closer until they meet in unison.
The Shostakovich, Prelude and Fugue No. 15 in D-flat (1951) was the evening’s tightest contrapuntal workout. The music is written as several simultaneous, independent lines, not a tune plus accompaniment. Trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba have to stay distinct and lock together. Around Grapes were David Elton and Cécile Glémot (trumpets), Samuel Jacobs (horn), Scott Kinmont (trombone) and Steve Rossé (tuba). Kinmont made the brass arrangement and Grapes noted how often a quintet has to grow its repertoire this way, there is still relatively little music written specifically for an all brass ensemble. In the program Kinmont describes enjoying the contrast between the waltz and the darker fugue. The waltz has to stay light and airborne while the players share the line and the fugue demands tight, independent entries inside a dense grind. The trumpets, Grapes especially, have to move fast, switching in an instant between blending and leading.
With Böhme’s Sextet for Brass (1911) the program stepped from the modernist soundworld into late-Romantic and the instrumentation changed again. The scoring is an older, more cushioned choir: cornet, two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba. David Elton took the cornet; Brent Grapes and Cécile Glémot the trumpets; Samuel Jacobs the horn; Scott Kinmont the trombone; Steve Rossé the tuba. Cornet and horn sat in the middle of the texture creating a warm, covered sound, with trombone and tuba underneath and the brighter trumpets on top. The whole piece sounded richer and more hymn-like.
The concert ended with Joan Tower’s Copperwave (2006). Tower is a master of codes, and here she deconstructs the fanfare. Written for the American Brass Quintet, it is scored for two trumpets, horn, trombone and bass trombone — the last replaced tonight by Steve Rossé on tuba. A fanfare wants unison and a clear top line for heraldic power. Tower withholds both. The piece is also continuous. Motifs circle instead of landing, one part holds a pulse while another turns the same pitches. They stay in friction until a final unison arrives at the end. The heroic gesture is still there, but it comes in waves the length of a breath, not as a single proclamation.
Thanks to Brent Grapes for very inspiring choices, to his colleagues for playing it as chamber music, to Genevieve Lang for hosting, to Handpicked Wines, and to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for another Cocktail Hour that let you hear the Brass section from the inside.
Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House, Friday 28/08/26
Program
Verne Reynolds (1926–2011)
Calls and Echoes (1986)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
arr. Scott Kinmont
24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1951)
No. 15 in D-flat major
Oskar Böhme (1870–1938)
Sextet for Brass, Op. 30 (1911)
- Adagio ma non tanto — Allegro molto
- Scherzo: Allegro vivace
- Andante cantabile
- Allegro con spirito
Joan Tower (born 1938)
Copperwave (2006)
