Modern Brass

The Stockholm Chamber Brass here presents a well-played program of Renaissance music arranged for modern brass, with the pluses and caveats that implies. The music’s fantastic and very well-selected: Susato, Dowland, Monteverdi, Gesualdo. The program itself smartly combines these, moving from lively dances and martial airs to arias and slow works of great beauty. Many tracks add percussion to the mix. The Monteverdi ‘moresca’ (track 25) is irresistible. The brass ensemble plays marvelously throughout, especially in slower, more introspective selections.

Canadian Brass playing songs from Canada… Is there anything more Canadian? To be covered by Canadian Brass means a song has to be able to transcend their lyrics and be easily recognised and enjoyable to the ear as instrumental covers. Aptly named Canadiana, the collection features songs by Shawn Mendes, k.d. lang, Joni Mitchell, Drake, Deadmau5 and of course Rush, done in true Canadian Brass style. As the most celebrated and enduring brass quintet in history, known for their skill and precision in performing both classical music and their own arrangements of modern songs, they have sold well over 2-million albums and have held Billboard chart positions in every decade of the group's existence.

Although the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble actually formed in 1951, its first full-length concert did not take place until the 1962 Aldeburgh Festival. Moreover, the group made its first recording only in 1970. It was the first such brass ensemble to perform in the world's major concert halls and to record with the preeminent labels. Philip Jones (born 1928), the ensemble's founder, was a virtuoso trumpet player whose first important position was with the Covent Garden orchestra, where he played from 1948 to 1951.

There is no shortage of discs around featuring transcriptions of Renaissance music for brass. Whilst played on modern instruments the main difference here however is that London Brass, several of whom play period instruments in other ensembles, have enlisted the specialist knowledge of Philip Pickett to direct them.