Manhattan Music – 2008 CD Release

“Elegant, laid-back performances and sonorous recordings sum up the spirit of a city”

– Gramophone, April 2009

PDF Download of Full Review

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE • October 27, 2008
Contact: Wende Persons • 718-852-9865 • pr@arkivmusic.com

Canadian Brass and Eastman Wind Ensemble release Manhattan Music recording the first-ever CD collaboration by North America’s most prestigious wind groups is available October 28 exclusively from ArkivMusic, the online classical music retailer BRYN MAWR, Pa.: ArkivMusic, The Source for Classical Music™ http://www.arkivmusic.com announced today that Manhattan Music, the first-ever joint recording by Canadian Brass and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, North America’s most prestigious wind groups, will be released on October 28th. The disc, exclusively available from ArkivMusic, both celebrates and continues a tradition of more than 50 years of Eastman Wind Ensemble recordings.

Since its founding by conductor Frederick Fennell at the Eastman School of Music, the Eastman Wind Ensemble has been in the forefront elevating the wind repertory through recordings. Fennell’s Mercury recordings of the 1950s and early ’60s were notable for their pioneering audio recording techniques. These “Living Presence” LPs focused on standard band literature by the most respected classical composers — heard for the first time in the newly balanced instrumentation.

Canadian Brass co-founder Chuck Daellenbach was a student at Eastman during the heyday of the Eastman Wind Ensemble in the early 1960s. His tuba-mate was Dixon Van Winkle, who has since become a highly successful recording producer/engineer, working with everyone from Frank Sinatra and Stan Getz, to the Paul Winter Consort and Paul McCartney. Daellenbach and Van Winkle decided to revisit and try to recapture some of the magical legacy of Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble. Their project, Manhattan Music, was recorded in the fall of 2007 at the Eastman Theater in Rochester, the location of the Ensemble’s 1950 Mercury recordings – and in collaboration with Chuck’s own Canadian Brass.

Mark Scatterday, the Ensemble’s current music director and conductor on the CD, worked with Daellenbach to create repertoire for the combination of brass quintet and wind ensemble. The resulting disc features new works and arrangements: Manhattan Music by Bramwell Tovey, Michael Sweeney’s Suite from Bernstein’s Mass, Scatterday’s arrangement of Shaker Suite by Rayburn Wright, former director of jazz studies at the Eastman School of Music, and New York CityScape by Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra Pops conductor, composer and arranger Jeff Tyzik.

Eric and Jon Feidner, twin brothers, brass players and ArkivMusic founders, have long admired the Mercury recordings of the Eastman Wind Ensemble with Fennell, as well as those by Canadian Brass. “We love this repertoire and nobody plays it better than these ensembles,” says ArkivMusic President Eric Feidner. “We wanted ArkivMusic to help manufacture and market this recording to a broader public.”

His brother Jon, ArkivMusic’s General Manager, agrees. “Manhattan Music offers substantial new and accessible contributions to the wind ensemble repertoire. It was just a natural for us to collaborate with the great Canadian Brass and the legendary Eastman Wind Ensemble, and the results are terrific.”
For more information and to hear samples from Manhattan Music visit www.ArkivMusic.com.

Manhattan Music
Label: Opening Day (ODR 7368)
Canadian Brass, Eastman Wind Ensemble
Mark Scatterday, conductor
Manhattan Music by Bramwell Tovey
Mass: Suite by Leonard Bernstein/arr. Michael Sweeney
Shaker Suite by Rayburn Wright/arr. Mark Scatterday
New York Cityscape by Jeff Tyzik

About Canadian Brass
Canadian Brass, founded in Toronto in 1970 by tuba player Chuck Daellenbach and trombonist Gene Watts, has gone on to record seventy albums for a variety of major labels. In a conscious effort to increase repertoire, the group has commissioned, performed and recorded hundreds of new compositions and transcriptions for brass quintet. Sometimes referred to as “the men who put brass music on the map” The Washington Post named them “the world’s leading brass ensemble.” Classical, baroque, jazz, show tunes, comedy, contemporary…Canadian Brass has the unique ability to easily cross musical genres, creating concerts and recordings that reach music lovers of every stripe, background and musical taste. The current lineup of Canadian Brass also includes French horn player Jeff Nelsen, and trumpeters Joe Burgstaller and Manon Lafrance, the first female musician to join the ensemble. For more information, visit www.canadianbrass.com.

About the Eastman Wind Ensemble
The Eastman Wind Ensemble is America’s leading wind ensemble. Its core of about 50 performers includes undergraduate and graduate students of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester and its current music director is Mark Davis Scatterday. Frederick Fennell first formulated the general concept of the wind ensemble at Eastman more than 50 years ago. Under Fennell’s and former director Donald Hunsberger’s leadership the group became known as the pioneering force in the symphonic wind band movement in the United States and abroad. The ensemble has done major tours both across the country and abroad. The ensemble’s 2004 tour of Japan, its seventh in that nation, also included performances in Taiwan and China. Over its 56-year history, the Ensemble has made dozens of recordings on the Mercury, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Summit Records labels, and has premiered more than 150 new works.

About ArkivMusic LLC
ArkivMusic – The Source for Classical Music™ http://www.arkivmusic.com is an online retailer of classical music focused on offering a vast selection of classical titles through an intuitive interface and a decentralized distribution platform. Since opening its online store in February 2002, ArkivMusic has built the largest selection of classical music recordings in the U.S., with access to over 90,000 titles from over 1,500 labels shipped from 20 distribution centers. In keeping with its mission of preservation, promotion, and efficient distribution of classical music, ArkivMusic’s innovative production-on-demand ArkivCD program allows consumers to find and purchase out-of-print recordings alongside the in-print catalog.

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Contact
To request more information, interviews, airplay or review copies of Manhattan Music, contact:
Wende Persons, ArkivMusic:
pr@arkivmusic.com; 718-852-9865
Janina Laughton, Opening Day Entertainment Group:
press@canadianbrass.com; 416-778-4456

On September 28, 2007, the Eastman Wind Ensemble presented a concert with special guest artists the Canadian Brass. The following day, all the musicians headed back to the Eastman Theatre for recording sessions for Manhattan Music, the latest in the long line of EWE recordings, whose release (and a tour) was scheduled for summer 2008.

The concert and CD program consisted of:

• Bramwell Tovey: Manhattan Music
• Jeff Tyzik: Sounds of the City – Movements in Dance (premiere recording)
• Rayburn Wright, arr. Scatterday: Shaker Suite
• Ellington/Henderson/Scatterday: It Don’t Mean a Thing
• Scatterday: Salute to Fennell and Sousa
• Michael Sweeney: Suite from Bernstein’s Mass

Eastman School of Music presents
CANADIAN BRASS with EASTMAN WIND ENSEMBLE
Mark Davis Scatterday, conductor

These two great groups joined forces for a brilliant program of great American music!

8 PM
Friday, September 28, 2007
Eastman Theatre

Tickets were $10 general admission/UR ID holders admitted free
Information: RPO Box Office, 454-2100

The Eastman Wind Ensemble
Recording Ensemble for Canadian Brass/EWE CD

Rehearsals started on September 5, 2007. Concert with the Canadian Brass is on Sept. 28 with recording sessions on Sept. 29-30. Parts will be available on Sept. 4.

EWE/CB Recording Project: Manhattan Music
*Eastman Theater — September 26-30, 2007
Draft Schedule

Wednesday, September 26th

• 3:45-5 EWE rehearses with CB (EWO will rehearse in 902A)
• 7-9:30 EWE rehearses with CB

Thursday, September 27th

• Afternoon Canadian Brass coachings
• 7-9:30 EWE rehearses with CB

Friday, September 28th

• 11am Canadian Brass to WXXI (live on air from 1-2pm)
• 3:45-5:25 EWE rehearses with CB (EWO will rehearse in 902A)
• 8pm Concert

Saturday, September 29th

• 9-12 Recording session 1
• 2-6 Recording session 2

Sunday, September 30th

• 9-12 Recording session 3
• 2-6 Recording session 4