ONYXBRASS

Time to Time review highlights:

 

The Guardian,July 10, 2011

Onyx Brass, a versatile quintet founded in 1993, prides itself in its dedication to modern composers, expanding the repertoire with new arrangements and commissions.....Dances from Rodeo, Copland's 1942 wild west ballet (arr. Joseph Hollings) launch the disc with a swagger. The elegiac and moving Two Cairns by Stuart MacRae (b 1976) and Time to Time by Timothy Jackson (b 1972) – melancholy settings persuasively sung by Mark Stone.........This is an eclectic ear-opener of a disc, virtuosically played.

 

 

Fugue review highlights:

 

Times, June 21, 2008

Their tone is clean and the phrasing well shaped, with intelligent application of slurs

 

IRR, July/August 2008

This is a splendidly planned and executed release, which no devotee of either composer could fail to enjoy…Apart from the exhilaration of the playing and the superb quality of the recording, made in a north London church, the disc has a nice pogical structure…

 

Classic FM Aug 2008

Five stars out of five… the premise of this delightful album builds a dialogue between Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Shostakovich’s own studies in the form, orhcestrated for the clarion tones of the Onyx Brass ensemble…Bach’s originals emerge refreshed by this new instrumental context

 

Gramophone, Sept 2008

Onyx Brass come alive as responsive individuals most readily in the Shostakovich.  The G major fugue is supremely virtuoso, the E minor resplendent and dramatic, the D major questing and deft.  And then comes the urgency of the G sharp minor, the multi-layered A flat and the orchestrally-inspired struggle of the D minor (marked resonancesof the Fifth Symphony in its new guise) – all delivered with a liberated and characterful imagination…The real achievement, however, is the Shostakovich, already downloaded on my iPod as some of the most thrilling chamber brass-playing of its kind.

 

Brass Herald, late 2008

Kevin Price, Head of Brass RWCMD Autumn 2008

Onyx brass has established itself as one of the finest exponents of brass chamber music and education in the UK and this recording affirms their outstanding ability to communicate and perform… Produced by Rachel Smith, this CD captures the intimate, vocal sound of the Onyx players with consistently refined balance and clarity…Each tonally matched fugue in this recording demonstrates that Onyx brass is a combination of musicians who have a unified musical philosophy and skills which together produce an ensemble of rare quality… Onyx brass is one the finest examples of the British brass quintet, not only perpetuating the traditions and style of the Philip Jones Brass ensemble but also extending the repertoire, aspirations and reputation of brass chamber music.