MUSIC REVIEW : Tribute to Benton Minor Is a Major Brass Feast

It was billed as a simple Sunday night tribute to Benton Minor, a recently retired Southern California musician/educator/band conductor and former chairman of the music department at Cal State Fullerton.

It turned into a brass marathon of epic proportions, an orgy of trumpets, trombones, tubas and horns filling Cal State Fullerton’s Little Theatre with gigantic, euphonious sounds, a veritable Cecil B. De Mille production of brass music. Three and a half hours later, one left the hall dazed, amazed and awed.

Members of the Pacific Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Westwind Brass and local free-lancers all took part. So did four members of those Olympians of the brass world, the Chicago Symphony brass section--specifically, its trombone and tuba section.

In a lengthy set of their own in the middle of the program, the Chicago trombones and tuba--Jay Friedman and Michael Mulcahy, tenor trombones; Charles Vernon, tenor and bass trombones, and Gene Pokorny, tuba--revealed a virtuosity and musicianship of world-class dimensions.

With idiomatic arrangements of music ranging from a Bach fugue to Vaughan Williams’ Folk Song Suite to Thielmans’ “Bluesette,” the Chicagoans showed effortless ensemble, lyrical elegance, astonishing technique and pure, ringing, richly burnished tone. In an arrangement of the “Belfast Hornpipe,” Mulcahy and Vernon exchanged jigging riffs seamlessly. In “Space Medley,” Vernon, on tenor trombone, proved to have a range greater than most opera singers. Their simple, noble reading of the theme from the St. Anthony Chorale (attributed to Haydn) had an irresistible, golden blend.

Elsewhere in the concert, with ensembles ranging in size from two to more than 30, there was much to admire. Of the three works by Minor’s son, Ron Minor, the premiere of his “Tutrovio” for viola and trombone was most impressive, a cheeky scherzando mix of Shostakovich and hoedown, with the composer and violist Iris Reeder the spirited duellists.

Los Angeles Philharmonic trombonist Jeffrey Reynolds led a formidable, efficient reading of Richard Strauss’ 1924 Fanfare. Jim Prindle conducted a lavishly glowing performance of the Adagio from Saint-Saeumlautns’ Third Symphony, arranged for horns, trombones and tuba. Tom Cole opened with a stately account of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” Mitchell Fennell coaxed a large ensemble through a lugubrious arrangement of Bach’s D-minor Chaconne.