Last night I went to see the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Canadian Brass in a concert called Bold and Brassy. The first piece was very bold to say the least, brassy not so much. It was called A Scotch Bestiary by James MacMillan. It had a lot of organ in it. I’m not sure I ever understood what was going on in the piece.
The second piece was very enjoyable. It was a piece with 3 movements trying to depict global warming. It started off fairly mellow, trying to demonstrate pieces of ice breaking off the glaciers. The second movement was a very smooth piece with a pouring sand effect to it. The piece ended very bold giving ending result of global warming. The composer talked for a little while about the piece and how he was still a little bit skeptical about global warming, because there are still a lot of very intelligent people saying that it is a completely natural effect. The piece almost gave off this feeling, that it was all natural.
The evening ended off with a final piece giving an image of New York. This was probably my favourite piece of the night. It had a very smooth jazzy theme with a nice largo movement in the middle of the piece. As the composer describes, all hell breaks loose at the end, which draws a pretty good picture of New York on top of all of the culture described by the rest of the piece.
I really enjoyed the whole concert. I suggest that you listen to some of the Canadian Brass music, which you can find on their website http://www.canadianbrass.com