BRASS: Durham International Festival is about much more than bands turning up, strutting their stuff and moving on to their next gig.
The musicians coming to the region over the next few weeks are passionate about brass and whenever possible stay longer in the area, mingle with the audiences and other musicians – including, of course, with members of County Durham’s 26 traditional British brass bands.
This year, four top class bands are staying on longer than usual – becoming Brass: Durham International Festival’s resident bands. They will be giving talks and workshops in schools and bandrooms, street performances and demonstrations in venues across the county.
Through encouraging artists to stay on and get involved at these grassroots events, the festival will strengthen the culture of brass in the area, creating a lasting legacy which promises great music for years to come.
Keep an eye out for the Brass bus, carrying musicians across the county to concerts and appearances. You can catch brass bands and musicians playing: on the streets of Durham City, at Durham Railway Station, at Crook Hall and Gardens, and at the Apollo Pavilion, Easington, on Sunday, July 12; in Durham’s Botanic Garden, at The Slug and Lettuce on Durham’s Walkergate, and in the streets of Darlington, on Friday, July 10, and Saturday, July 11; in Bishop Auckland on Saturday, July 18; and at numerous other venues.
Here’s a preview of what bands will be taking part and what you can expect.
HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE
STREETWISE brothers who create family fusion with their instruments.
The eight brothers in the band are the youngest of virtuoso jazz trumpeter Phil Cohran’s 15 sons.
Starting when the boys were between three and five years old, Cohran – best known for his contributions to the Sun Ra Arkestra in Chicago from 1959 to 1961 – taught them to play trumpet, tuba, drums, French horn, cornet and trombone.
Cohran would wake the boys at 5am for practice in their bunkbed-lined room. First, the boys were given just mouthpieces. Only when they could produce a pure sound did they graduate to the body of the instrument.
The brothers put together Hypnotic Brass Ensemble in 1999, after a stint as a hip-hop group called the Wolf Pack, when teenage rebellion drew them away from their brass roots.
Hypnotic cut their teeth as a street band and, when they relocated from Chicago to New York, they preferred to play on street corners rather than in clubs.
Each band member goes by a nickname, which increases the street gang image: Tarik, Yoshi, Hudah and Baji play trumpet, Cid and Seba play trombone, Tycho plays sousaphone and Rocco plays baritone horn.
Hypnotic now have ten albums of their own music, including The Brothas, Flipside, NYC Live, Pay Up and Jupiter. They have played with Erikah Badu, Mos Def and Damon Albarn, and at this year’s Brass they will be backing Femi Kuti and The Positive Force, leading a workshop at St Joseph’s RCVA Primary School, Coundon, and playing in their own right at the Big Bish Bash in Bishop Auckland.
Trumpeter Hudah – real name Gabriel Hubert – said: “Our music has a special gravitational pull.
People can’t walk past it. People always tell us, ‘I just had to follow that sound’.”
BELLA TROMBA
THE name means The Beautiful Trumpet and band member Jo Harris was hooked the first time she saw one in a shop window wrapped up in Christmas tinsel.
She hopes the group will stimulate the same enthusiasm during their workshop at St Mary’s School in Blackhill, Consett.
She said: “We like all the workshops to be interactive and we love getting the kids involved and learning how instruments work.
We get a hosepipe with a trumpet mouthpiece at one end and a funnel at the other and play Handel’s Water Music.
“We try to do a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar. Our encore is the theme from Wallace and Gromit, and that usually goes down really well, but some of the other music they won’t have heard.
“It’s more about going and performing to a high standard. If they see you are skilled, they are impressed by that and we don’t dumb down, so there will be some Mozart and Bach.”
Bella Tromba are also appearing at a recital at Elvet Methodist Church on July 16, but Jo Harris doesn’t see a great difference between that kind of performance and the hands-on workshop style.
She said: “I think the two things complement each other. It’s just a big part of what we do and it’s an exciting part. You get much more sense of the audience. We’ve done work in young offenders’ institutions and if they don’t like something they will tell you in no uncertain terms, so it keeps you flexible. We always have an idea of what to play and we adapt. If people like something a bit more we’ll do more of that, or less if it’s not to their taste.”
OOMPAH BRASS
THE group set out with a view to playing highly traditional German music, such as waltzes, polkas and marches. But when they started making music, they began arranging classic pop songs with a slightly Bavarian feel, creating the fusion dubbed “Oompop”.
Their latest repertoire features tracks as diverse as Motorhead’s Ace of Spades, Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and Waltzing Matilda.
They have two albums – The Oompire Strikes Back and Oompacalypse Now.
BEAT’N’BLOW
AN 11-piece Berlin band known for their energetic stage performances and as a top marching act who create a revolutionary fusion of jazz, funk, hip-hop and world styles – BlasMusik. With two singers, two drummers and a seven-piece horn section, they entertain enthusiastic festivals crowds both on the street and on stage.
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