John Rojak, a bass trombonist and longest active member of the American Brass Quintet (ABQ), was once asked how being in American Brass Quintet changed his life.
“I dressed better, and more people call me mister,” he answered in jest, throwing the interviewer for a loop.
“But it was true,” he admits. “I was in the group with Ray Mase [trumpet], who was a sort of a fashion icon, so I had to get a new wardrobe, and suddenly people called me mister, which was weird.”
Rojak, who has been with ABQ since 1991, and his fellow members—Kevin Cobb and Brandon Ridenour on the trumpet, Eric Reed on the horn, and Hillary Simms on the trombone—will bring their music and humor to the Eastman School of Music on December 2 and 3 as part of the James E. Clark Chamber Music Residency. While on the Eastman campus, they’ll teach master classes and give a public recital, which takes place on Tuesday, December 3 at 12:30 p.m. in Kilbourn Hall.
“The Eastman School of Music is happy and proud to host the American Brass Quintet, on December 2 and 3, made possible by the generosity of the Clark Residency program,” says Mark Kellogg, professor of trombone and chair of winds, brass, and percussion at Eastman. “The ABQ has long stood for all the highest ideals of brass chamber music by commissioning substantive works, performing on the world’s most important concert series, and through their impactful teaching and coaching at the Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival. Our students (and faculty!) will garner great inspiration from their visit.”
The American Brass Quintet was founded in 1960, one of the first contemporary brass quintets in history. (The second, to be exact. The Chicago Brass Quintet began in the 1940s.) The ABQ is noted for both congealing and popularizing the quintet instrumentation as the premier type of brass chamber ensemble and helping grow its repertoire. In contrast to other major quintets like the Canadian Brass Quintet, which performs many transcriptions of works originally for other instrumental combinations, the American Brass Quintet performs music specifically written for the instrumentation, typically through commissions. Rojak estimates that the group has averaged three to five commissions a year since its beginnings. They’ve endeavored to record most of those works for posterity. As their name suggests, they commission mainly American composers.
And they’ve differentiated themselves in another way: instead of using a tuba for the lowest brass instrument, which is most common in brass quintets, they opt for a bass trombone. Rojak, the group’s bass trombonist, says it’s a matter of timbre and blend.
The tuba, he says, “would be like if a string quartet had a double bass instead of a cello. Double bass can play the cello parts, but it’s a little harder to blend.”
While at Juilliard as a student, he was asked to sit in a brass quintet instead of a tuba player who supposedly hadn’t yet arrived at the school. There was no tuba player; they just wanted to see what it would sound like with a bass trombonist. Always keeping his eye on the American Brass Quintet, when the prior bass trombonist retired in 1990 and the position opened, Rojak “prepared as I had never prepared for an audition before” and won the job.
Prior, he had been successfully freelancing in New York City––and it turned out that being in a professional brass quintet wasn’t entirely different: it offered the same variety. “It was only sort of recently that I realized that playing in a brass quintet is a lot like freelancing, where I would have days where I would have a big band rehearsal in the morning, a brass quintet rehearsal in the afternoon, and an orchestra concert at night or a Broadway show, going from one to the next. For about 45 years, I’ve been doing the same thing, except it’s always different. So by doing the same thing, I’m playing different music and playing different styles in a brass quintet.”
The American Brass Quintet will play a varied program in their Kilbourn Hall recital. Included is a work by Renaissance composer William Brade. But the rest will be contemporary works, including one by composer Jennifer Higdon, “which we think so suits the mission of trying to get pieces of leading composers of our time,” says Rojak. They’ll also perform a “mammoth” work by David Biedenbender, which Rojak says is “this extraordinary piece, just a journey through the four movements. The third movement is one of the most emotional pieces that we have.”
They’ll also include a work by Eastman alumnus Eric Ewazen ’76E. Rojak said he recently ran into Ewazen at Juilliard and mentioned that the American Brass Quintet would be coming to Eastman and performing his work “Frost Fire.” “That’s great,” Ewazen reportedly told Rojak. “You tell the Eastman folks that that’s where I got my start writing for brass.”
As for master classes, Rojak found a particularly concise way to explain master classes in a radio interview during an Australian tour.
“Imagine if you had students and they had a row of blocks,” he recalls saying. “It’s in a straight line, and we think that having a curved line might be more interesting. We explain it to them and teach them how to make a curved line.”
He enjoys working with students of all abilities but saviors the challenge of working with players already on a professional path. “It’s going to be excellent being able to show Eastman students a different way, or also just saying the same thing that their teachers have been telling them for four years in slightly different language.”
American Brass Quintet
Tuesday, December 3 | 12:30 p.m. | Kilbourn Hall
Free and open to the public