Services
What We Do
Concerts
Mainstreet Brass has been on the concert stage since 1986, treating audiences with a myriad of unique programs during artistic residencies and at performing arts festivals and concert series in the mid-Atlantic, Midwest and New England regions of the United States. The quintet is equally at home with a Bach fugue as it is with a Fats Waller blues chart and offers listeners its own arrangements of show tunes, marches, orchestral works and holiday music. As part of its mission to expand brass quintet literature and keep its programs fresh and engaging, Mainstreet Brass commissions imaginative and accessible compositions and arrangements from emerging and established composers from around the country and the United Kingdom.
Christmas Concerts
Mainstreet Brass’s Christmas concerts have become popular traditions among concert presenters and audiences. Our unique holiday program includes performances of the nostalgic music behind those classic animated television shows for kids and families, a look back at the Christmas music that echoed in the great halls of Elizabethan England and inspiring arrangements of some of the best loved carols that warm the heart during this special time of year.
One of the group’s often requested pieces is “A Christmas Carol – A Dickens of a Tale,” which sets the 19th century literary classic into a unique musical setting with narration. Written for Mainstreet Brass by Alan Danson, a London-based composer, the three-movement work offers an imaginative ghostly tour of Ebenezer Scrooge’s unforgettable night of soul-searching and salvation. You can hear the moan of Jacob Marley’s ghost, be warned by the tolling clock chimes and finally rejoice with the redeemed old miser at the end of the piece.
A Christmas concert by the Mainstreet Brass is always a fun way to celebrate the season and bring the year to a rousing close.
Church Services
The Mainstreet Brass maintains an active library of liturgical works for all seasons, including stylized arrangements of classic hymn tunes the group commissioned from composers around the country, and a wide variety of music for organ and brass and choir. The group has performed at major liturgical music conferences, where it has premiered new hymns and demonstrated the flexibility of the brass quintet in worship settings.
Educational Programs
As part of its educational mission, Mainstreet Brass presents lively, entertaining school programs to teach young people about the wonders and beauty of music and the role brass instruments have played through the years. The group has invited members of such celebrated ensembles as the Empire Brass to participate in educational workshops, to bring added excitement to an assembly or day-long schedule of master classes and performances.
The veteran music teachers in the Mainstreet Brass know how to fire young minds in their explanations of what life was like for brass players before valves came along and the strange sounds that came out of the predecessors of the modern brass family. The group presents clinics, explains to students what makes brass instruments work and engages them in discussions.
Special Events
Mainstreet Brass is available for corporate functions, academic ceremonies and private parties. Whether you’re looking for an elegant program of traditional Baroque music for brass or an entertaining mix of light classics, jazz and swing, Mainstreet Brass can provide the right mood for your event.