WELCOME TO YOUR SANDLER CENTER 2WHO’S WHO IN CANADIAN BRASS 3THE BRASS FAMILY 4THE BRASS QUINTET 5GOOD VIBRATIONS 6OF OVERTONES… 7TORONTO 8LEARN MORE ABOUT IT 9REACHING FOR EXCELLENCE 10CONNECTING SOLS 11SANDLER CENTER CALENDAR 12

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SCANADIAN BRASS STUDENT MATINEE

Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.

2WELCOME TO THE SANDLER CENTER

At the heart of every great city are its arts institutions—the centers of culture where residents and visitors can share great works of music, dance, and theatre, from the classics to the cutting edge. This November, the great city of Virginia Beach reveals its newest work of art: the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts. With its soaring glass façade revealing the magnifi cent lobby with its grand staircase and glittering chandelier, Sandler Center beckons patrons to sample the spectacular offerings that will grace the city’s newest stage. Expansive yet intimate, with not a bad seat in the house, the Sandler Center is the perfect setting for every kind of performance, from classical recitals and symphony concerts to modern dance and ballet, theater, and more.

And while audiences of every kind are welcome, the Sandler Center offers a special invitation to the region’s young people. The Virginia Arts Festival, well known for its WorldClass® Education Program, will be presenting, in cooperation with the Sandler Center, specially priced student matinees which will make performances by world-class artists accessible to school children—many of whom may be hearing their fi rst performance of live classical music, or seeing their fi rst Shakespeare play. And the excitement reaches beyond the stage as well, as the Sandler Center brings these renowned artists into area schools for performances and master class-es. For teachers, the opportunities are immeasurable, offering exciting new ways to inspire and enhance their classroom teaching as they weave the arts into their lessons on history, language arts, math and science.

Be among the fi rst to experience the arts in this beautiful new facility — spark your students’ imaginations with the joy and power of the performing arts.

Reserve performances and master classes now! Call (757) 605-3071.

3

Canadian Brass sprang onto the Toronto music scene in

1970 as an experimental fi ve-member group, blending

traditional styles with an avant garde approach to their

audiences. When they fi rst got started, the now “standard”

brass quintet wasn’t really considered a serious concert

ensemble – Canadian Brass was on the cutting edge of

raising this genre into the spotlight. This take-

a-chance brass quintet has, over the past 35

years, branched out into many different styles

of music, and has commissioned more than 200

new works. From Vivaldi to Wagner, their unique approach and high musical stan-

dards catapulted and kept them in the international spotlight. They’ve performed in

pretty much every major venue worldwide.

The group consists of fi ve guys: Josef Burgstaller, trumpet;

Jeroen Berwaerts, trumpet; Bernhard Scully, French horn;

Gene Watts, trombone; and Charles Daellenbach on tuba.

Two of these players are original members of the group. The

original fi ve individuals, while all classically trained, had a

vision that would not allow their music to be restricted In

their formative years, they broke down stylistic barriers

only to discover that their instruments had a vibrant life

outside the “standards” dictated by the staid classical

music community of the times. The rest, as they say,

is musical history: Canadian Brass is a worldwide

phenomenon, breaking all the rules and delight-

ing audiences everywhere. They’ve got numerous recordings (more than 60 to

date), ranging from Purcell, to Christmas tunes, to jazz and popular recordings. It’s

interesting to note that after all their musical adventuring and diversions, they

continue to gravitate back to J.S. Bach, as one of their favorite composers to perform.

Check out their online store: They have a CD called “Amazing Brass,” a DVD called

“Three Nights with Canadian Brass,” a slew of songbooks, and a line of Technicolor

mouthpieces, all available online. They also come with quite a following of fans, even

offering a monthly insider newsletter.

WHO’S WHO IN CANADIAN BRASS

Have fun exploring their VERY comprehensive webpage at

www.canadianbrass.com

4THE BRASS FAMILY

From piccolo trumpet on down to tuba, all brass instruments are related by two things: the material used to make the instruments and the way you blow into the mouthpiece to produce a sound.

Before getting historical, let’s clarify a couple key points. All brass instruments are made of, well, brass or metal (except the

sousaphone which is often constructed out of fi berglass), and all brass instruments produce a sound by having air

blown through a mouthpiece into the instrument with the player’s lips buzzing as they blow.

Brass instruments have been around a long time. Some of the

earliest examples of brass instruments were straight trumpets

made of wood, bronze, and silver, such as the salpinx found in Greece. Other early brass instruments were horns made of bronze and animal horns. The schofar (made from the horn of a ram) is an ancient Hebrew brass instrument which is still used in Jewish ceremonies today.

The world is full of long, round cylinders, most of which are suitable for making music. From bam-boo to hollow reeds and branches, there are tons of natural material out there on which to create musical sounds. There are a lot of ways to play such cylinders, but the way you produce a sound with these objects are what make fl utes fl utes and horns horns. With fl utes, you blow a column of air into or

across the instrument. With all brass instru-ments, as mentioned earlier, you buzz. The fl ared bell and the bell-shaped mouthpiece serve to amplify and focus the mouth

sound into a series of pitches. By tightening their lips (embouchure), changing the speed

and volume of air, and depressing valves (and practicing a lot), brass players can achieve the

full range of chromatic pitches.

A brass quintet actually consists of four instrument types: 2 trum-pets, 1 French horn, 1 trombone, and 1 tuba. Like the string quar-tet and woodwind quintet, these instruments, taken from the orchestra and band, have evolved into a now “standard” chamber ensemble that com-posers write and arrange for. It’s early beginnings are found both in 16th century antiphonal music for the church as well as on the battlefi eld with bugle calls (everyone knows “Taps”), hunt-ing signals, and 19th century German brass bands.

5

TrumpetThe highest-playing mem-bers of the brass family, early trumpets date back all the way to the tomb of King Tut! The Bible talks about them, and there’s evidence that they were part of the ancient Olympics in Greece. The fi rst trumpets were re-ally bugles: smaller bronze and brass instruments with-out valves that curve in on themselves. They could pro-duce the fundamental tone and the harmonic notes of an octave, perfect fi fth and major third, as well as some very high, piercing diatonic pitches (those pitches in a major scale). But the true trumpet was born when valves were added. Some early trumpets, like the tee-ny piccolo trumpet, had ro-tary valves, but most devel-oped into the familiar “push valve” style of the modern trumpet. There is a similar horn called a cornet which looks like a trumpet but has a conical bore throughout its length (getting bigger and bigger from one end of its tubing to the other – like a “cone”) while most of a trumpet’s tubing is cylindri-cal (with a bore all the same width).

French HornThe French horn developed in Europe as an instrument to direct upper class hunters to and from the game (fox-es and boars – not Monop-oly). Along the way, valves were added to increase the number of pitch possibili-ties to enhance the horn’s repertoire of signals to the hunters. These horns were traditionally round with a widely fl aring bell to help project the lower notes. The French horn didn’t make it onto the concert stage until the 1600’s, and even then it was used to depict hunting scenes. It was just too loud and raucous. Many compos-ers wanted the sound, but all the crook changes and harsh timbre created obsta-cles. The practice of point-ing the horn away from the audience and putting a fi st inside the bell of the instru-ment to modulate the pitch and mellow the timbre is at-tributed to a German horn-player named Hampel in 1854. Up until that time, the horn had been played bell-upwards, as in the hunting fi eld.

TromboneSome time in the 1400’s, brass makers created a va-riety of trumpet which used the concept of a slide, a “U-bent” tube inside another tube, to increase total tub-ing as the musician played. Since the length of tubing changed the pitches, this was perfect for creating an instrument that could produce low notes of all pitches. The slide gives the trombone its special look and sound with its distinc-tive glissando effect. In the last hundred years or so, trombone-shaped instru-ments with valves were used, but they soon grew out of fashion and disap-peared. An early, medieval prototype of the trombone was the sackbut (believe it or not), which is derived from an early phrase for “valve pipe.” The modern trombone comes in assort-ed sizes, from an alto trom-bone to bass trombones, to give a full range of octaves to this important and often humorous instrument.

TubaThe tuba is the big bad boy of the brass family. It was developed because orches-tras needed an instrument that could compete with the big sound of the other brass and also provide the lowest notes in an ensem-ble in which the bottom voice of an instrument de-termines the type of chord being played. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that there was technol-ogy sophisticated enough to bend all that metal into something playable. The ad-dition of valves was a huge perk to the tuba, which ul-timately gained popularity. There are many sizes of tu-bas, some three-valve and others four. It contains the longest tubing of any brass instrument, and, naturally, produces the lowest pitch-es. There is a different con-fi guration of this instrument which is not designed to sit in the player’s lap, but to be worn over the shoulder and marched down the street: It is the very big, very round sousaphone, invented by the king of the marching band, John Philip Sousa.

BRASS QUINTET

6GOOD VIBRATIONS

ROUND AND ROUND IT GOES... HOW DOES THAT WORK?

It used to be called the “Bronx Cheer,” and it was liberally used when the umpire made a bad call in the baseball stadium. It was easy: You just put your lips together and BUZZ! Put a brass instrument in front of your lips and you’ve got the beginnings of a basic brass technique.

When you think about it, ALL music is vibration, whether you’re hitting a piano string with a felt-covered hammer, or twanging a

guitar string with a pick or passing air over your vocal chords in the shower. You can get similar results with a plastic ruler on the edge of your

desk. Twang it and, depending on how much of the ruler hangs over the edge, you’ll get a low or high pitch. ANYTHING that vibrates creates a tone. A hum-

mingbird’s heart beats so fast it creates a tone…and the reason it works has to do with the air itself.

Think of molecules of air like teeny tennis balls - they’re elastic and they bounce. So when a bunch of them are struck by the leading edge of, let’s say, a vibrat-

ing string, they bounce away in all directions, smashing into any other molecules around. And there are lots of them around. After all, we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. These molecules bounce off the walls and the fl oor and the ceiling and, oh

yes, you and me. Some fi nd their way into our sound collectors (we call them ears) and smack up against our eardrums, which vibrate sympathetically. Resting on the other side of our “tympanum” (the offi cial name for our eardrums) are some of the smallest bones in our bodies that, in turn, pulse fl uid in our inner ear. Little hairs in the fl uid vibrate, and that vibration is turned into minute amounts of electricity, which fl oods our brain with what we perceive as sound.

Many early cultures fi gured out the “buzz-ing” technique for creating sound. They used natural tubing, like those big conch shells Pacifi c Islanders use or long, hol-low tubes from plants, which Australian Aboriginal folks made into digereedoos fi fty thousand years ago. The conch shell is perfect be-cause it has all those connecting chambers. Remember: The longer a tube, the lower its sound.

So whenever you hear a musical tone, whether it’s a church bell or a puppy whining, you’d bet-ter believe there’s something vibrating.

digereedoo

7

Ever wonder how bugles and other brass instruments without valves create those clear, distinct notes? Here’s how it works:

Most listeners, even many non-musicians, can recognize an octave when they hear it. Our whole musical perception is based on it. But trying to defi ne an octave is tough. We can say that it’s any two notes which have the same letter name, like C# and the next C# up, but that doesn’t tell us much.

It turns out that there are two very precise relationships between these two notes, and the fi rst has to do with how fast they vibrate. The faster a string (or anything else) vibrates, the higher the pitch. Many of you have heard of “A-440.” What that means is that anything that vibrates 440 times a second will produce the note “A.” A tuning fork, a string, a set of lips vibrating into a tuba, a clarinet reed, any-thing.

The fact is that the two notes that produce an octave have a 2:1 ratio. In other words, if a low “A” vibrates 440 times a sec-ond, the next “A” an octave up will vibrate 880 times, and the next up 1,760 times a second.

The second relationship between octave notes is the physi-cal length of the instrument that transmits the vibrations. In a string, any length will produce a tone, but if you cut that string exactly in half, the remaining half will vibrate twice as fast which, as we all now know, will produce an octave.

Now here’s the twist (literally)! Strings don’t necessarily vibrate as a whole; they can be made to vibrate in sections.If you place your fi nger at the halfway point of a string very lightly, you will have effectively cut the string into two sec-tions. If you pluck one section, an octave will sound and the other half of the string will vibrate sympathetically. Even when you play the whole string, there are sections that ap-pear at the halfway point, the thirds, the fourths, etc… These harmonics, or partials, ring out much softer than the main vibration, but they’re there.

So, believe it or not, when you play one note, that note is made up of much softer notes an octave, a perfect fi fth, and many other notes higher up. Brass players take advantage of these facts when they play. They’re not plucking strings, but they can tighten their embouchure (position of lips on the mouthpiece), which is how a bugler playing “taps” can get all those notes with no valves at all.

OF OVERTONES, PARTIALS AND HARMONICS

There’s no sound in outer space. No matter how cool those Star Trek ships sound when they go into warp drive, the fact is that if you don’t have molecules to bounce off of each other, sound can’t happen, and space is, after all, a vacuum (one molecule every gazillion miles).

Of course, all cultures have music. Because of the physical relationships of pitch, all cultures have octaves and perfect fi fths and other ba-sic harmonic relationships in their music.

Our Western human ears are trained to prefer the “consonant,” pretty sounding intervals like octaves, and tend to dislike “dissonant” intervals…you know, the ones that sound like two notes fi ghting each other. One of the most dissonant intervals in Western music is called a tritone, and it’s often used as a siren in European police cars to make us run the other way. Play “F#” and the “C” below it over and over and you’ll get the message.

Humans can’t hear all pitches: Women can hear higher pitches than men, and dogs can hear much higher than women. That’s how dog whistles work. By the way, snakes can’t hear at all – no ears, poor dears.

8

Located along the northern banks of Lake Ontario, just north of Detroit (give or take a few hours wait-ing at the boarder), this town is home to the world’s tallest building (CN Tower), the world’s longest street (Yonge Street), and the world’s fi nest brass quintet (you know who!). Its name, Toronto, comes from the Huron word meaning “Meeting Place,” and that’s exactly what you’ll fi nd a multicultural meeting place for nearly 5 million people of 70 different nationalities speaking some 100 languages. And it’s big! It’s the largest city in Canada, with one third of all Canadians living there, and the fi fth largest city in North America.

Toronto’s history goes back. There’s evidence that some 8,000 years ago, prehistoric humans were hunting dear and elk on its shores. They were followed by the Iroquois whose cultural infl uence spread over 200 villages throughout the Toronto area. Going into the 17th century, British and French fur traders began arriving, followed by the inevitable battles for power and land. Before Europeans eliminated native cultures and populations through war and disease, it was initially the Iroquis doing battle with their neighbors the Hurons, with the British and French taking sides with one tribe or the other. The French erected the fi rst European structure, Fort Rouillé, on Toronto’s soil in 1751 – only to be destroyed by the British in the Seven Years’ War in 1759. After the Revolu-tionary War, Toronto saw a stream of British loyalists fl ee the newly formed United States, settling in the Lake Ontario area.

Today, Toronto is thriving, bustling, full of arts and culture, parks and playgrounds, with a well-planned subway system and great educational opportunities. The artistic message is also loud and clear: The Arts are alive and well here.

TORONTO

Although Canadian Brass can be found performing in just about

any little corner of the world, they hail from one of Canada’s

truly cosmopolitan cities: Toronto, Ontario.

The cultural birthplace of Canadian Brass has a lot to offer!

9

EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY

Defi ne the following words:

OVERTONE

PARTIAL

HARMONIC

OCTAVE

RATIO

VIBRATION

PITCH

MOLECULE

SYMPATHETICALLY

TYMPANUM

PERCEIVE

CONCH

ABORIGINAL

FUNDAMENTAL

PERFECT FIFTH

MAJOR THIRD

DIATONIC

RAUCOUS

CROOK

TIMBRE

GLISSANDO

LEARN MORE ABOUT IT

FURTHER LEARNINGListed here are books and links to get your class launched on the waters of discovery!

Trumpet and Brass by Paul Archibald

Brass by Wendy Lynch

Brass by Elizabeth Sharma

Brass by Dee Lillegard

Brass by Roger Thomas

Brass Instruments by Sharon Sharth

Playing the Trumpet and Brass by Paul Archibald

Woodwinds and Brass by Barrie Turner

Abracadabra Trumpet: Brass by Alan Tomlinson

Woodwind & Brass Instruments by Robert Dearling

Trumpets by Cynthia Klingel

Wynton Marsalis: Trumpet Genius by Leslie Gourse

History of brass instruments: plato.acadiau.ca/courses/musi/ callon/2273/instr.htmwww.unca.edu/~dwilken/brasshistory.html

Canadian Brass Website:www.canadianbrass.com/

Brass instrument introduction:bubl.ac.uk/link/b/brassinstruments.htmyorkville.k12.il.us/webquests/webqolson/webqsolson.htm

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�DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1 Horns are called horns because the fi rst were made from animal horns. How do you think this discovery took place?

2 What other cylinders are in your everyday life?

3 What are some other examples of things folded on each other in order to fi t into a small space? (Think anatomy)

4 Valves are used throughout industry as a way of regulating the passage of gases or liquids as they travel through a hole. Nature uses valves, too. What are some examples?

5 What is the origin of the word “crook?” Is it related to the word spelled the same way meaning “a thief?”

6 Why were valves added to the bugle?

7 What is the difference between a cornet and a trumpet? How do you think this difference affects the sound?

8 Why are horns important in hunting? Why was is diffi cult for the French horn to shake its reputation and be taken seriously?

9 Trombone players slide to reach the notes they want to play, while the rest of the brass instruments press valves. What unique effects would the trombone player be able to produce?

10 What technology do you think was invented that allowed the creation of the tuba?

REACHING FOR EXCELLENCE

� Make a Brass Instrument - With a section of garden hose and a funnel, you can create a brass instrument! Insert the funnel into one end, and blow with buzzing lips into the other end. Vary the length of hose to vary notes produced.

� Musical Conversation - Chamber music is like a conversation. Instruments pass the melody back and forth, taking turns “saying” something while the others chime in. Have students listen to a selection and then act out what they believe is being “said.” Students could also write a musical

skit based on a selection or discuss the meaning or message of a piece after using the role-playing as a preparation.

� Walk This Way - What kind of personality does a tuba have? It is a he or a she? What would it look like if it were a person? How would that person walk, talk, dress, act? Have your students assign personalities and human equivalents to the brass instruments. Have them walk across the room,

as one instrument as a selection of that instrument is played. Then surprise them by playing a selection outside of the personality they assigned.

ARTS ACTIVITIES

11

ENGLISH HISTORY/

SOCIAL STUDIES SCIENCE MATH

Write the autobiography of a brass instrument through time. Use the fi rst person and include feelings. For example, how did it feel to have so many crooks yanked out and replaced? Did you like being twisted into a portable size?

When did the fi rst brass quintet form and perform? Have students research the origins of the ensemble and identify some “Canadian Brass” ensembles of the past. Has there ever been a brass quintet as famous as the Canadian Brass?

When can you see a brass instrument outside of the concert hall? How are brass instruments used in every day life (think of a bicycle accessory)?

What parts of the body are used to play a brass instru-ment? Create a list including how each part of the body is used. For example, the parts which make physical contact with the instrument are the lips and the fi ngers. The lips purse to regulate the amount of air, which is pushed through the esoph-agus from the lungs. The muscles in the fi ngers push the bones in the right posi-tion to fi rmly depress the buttons.

Have students research how a brass instrument is made. Through what processes does the metal go? How is the metal fl attened so thinly and smoothly? How are the tubes made? How are the valves formed?

How do the brass instru-ments compare in num-bers? Which is heaviest? Which produces the most notes? Which has the most parts? How many of each are sold per year in the United States? Which is the most popular in high school bands?

Describe brass instruments through numbers. How many notes can each in-strument produce? How many valves does each in-strument have? How many notes are produced per valve? How much brass is in each instrument? If each instrument was stretched out, how long would it be?

Musical notes are written as numbers which repre-sent the number of oscilla-tions in one second. How do these numbers change when a pitch is changed? How about if pitches are played simultaneously?

CONNECTING SOLS

Have students create a graphic design version of Toronto’s name. One option is to replace each vowel with a Canadian or Torontonian symbol. Also, did you notice that the CN Tower looks like a “T”...?

Out of the Box…

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STUDENT EDUCATION GUIDES

Team

Jennifer GiddensEducation Director

Adam PitzenEducation Coordinator

Douglas ThieleResearch and Writing

Lisa DagleyPage Design and Layout

Student Education Guides All rights reserved. ©2007

Photocopying and duplicating for educational purposes only.

www.sandlercenter.org

Itzhak Perlman November 3 8:00 PM“He can spin long lyrical phrases into 24-carot gold …” – THE CHICAGO TIMES

Nickel CreekNovember 7 7:30 PM

Vienna Boys ChoirDecember 4 7:30 PM

Canadian BrassDecember 13 7:30 PM

Tango FireJanuary 9 7:30 PM

ComplexionsFebruary 8 8:00 PM

Keb MoFebruary 20 7:30 PM

LeahyMarch 6 7:30 PM

The Merchant of VeniceMarch 20 7:30 PM

DIAMOND SERIES

Pat Metheny TrioNovember 10 8:00 PM

Platters-Drifters CoastersNovember 24 8:00 PM

Tony Bennett December 14 8:00 PM “The best in the business”

– FRANK SINATRA

Bowfi reJanuary 20 7:00 PM

AerosFebruary 5 7:30 PM

ChieftansMarch 12 7:30 PM

GypsyMay 8 7:30 PM

PLATINUM SERIES

MORE PERFORMANCES

Opening Gala with Bonnie Raitt!November 16 8:00 PM

Shaolin WarriorsNovember 8 7:30 PM

Arthur Live!November 13 7:00 PM

Windham Hill Winter Solstice TourDecember 7 8:00 PM

Aga-BoomApril 11 8:00 PM

For Tickets, Call 757-385-ARTSwww.sandlercenter.org