Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose Suite), Op. 87 (1910/2017)

Program Notes:

In my freshman year at Eastman, I performed "Ma Mère l'Oye" with my wind quintet in an arrangement by Frank Morelli. I was quite taken with the piece. I next ran across it my senior year in my orchestration class, where we were tasked to arrange the final sixteen bars for brass quintet. I was surprised with how well this worked out and kept it in the back of my mind to arrange the entire duo piano suite for brass quintet.

This past summer (2017), I was talking with Noah Lauziere and we were talking about the tuba family, as one does. He plays euphonium (i.e., tenor tuba), and it's good fun to refer to flugelhorns as soprano tubas. What then, would be an alto tuba? After a bit of research (and thanks to Bret Newton's Bandestration site), we determined mellophonium would probably be the best option. While I was thinking of having a tuba choir (along the lines of a clarinet choir), he came up with the idea of a tuba quintet - a brass quintet, but all members of the tuba family. At the end of the summer we ended up jointly purchasing a mellophonium, so all that was left was to secure repertoire.

One of the things I like about playing in reed quintet is that, as such a young ensemble, all the transcriptions and original works are written for high-level professional ensembles, without concessions made to "educational needs". It is my hope to continue this trend for the tuba quintet with this initial offering. High-level players are required to meet the demands of delicacy in the score.