Two brass quintets will fill the Barrus Concert Hall with sounds of Christmas Thursday in the BYU-Idaho Chamber Brass Christmas concert “A Brassy Christmas.”
The music will feature arrangements from several countries with well-known classic tunes and some lesser-known Christmas songs. Each quintet is made up of two trumpets, a French horn, a trombone and a tuba.
Chamber Brass director Bryce Mecham aims to make the concert a spiritual experience for those who attend. They will read the Christmas story from the scriptures and sing hymns with the brass accompanying them.
“I just wanted to make it like a real celebration of Christmas,” Mecham said. “I think that's one of my favorite things about celebrating Christmas is reading through the story and the scriptures. My family also enjoys singing Christmas carols, so we put those two things together.”
Toward the end of the concert, the musicians will display their talents by accompanying the audience in a song the audience chooses.
“Plus, having the students accompany them, they will not have rehearsed,” Mecham said. “There will basically be sight reading. So, this is kind of an exercise for them to use skills that they're learning as musicians to be able to read music at sight and perform it well. The skill level varies for student to student, but really each of them are learning to be very technically proficient at their instruments and one of the things that we teach them is to be able to read music just like they read the English language so that they can read it at sight and play it expressively.”
The concert is Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Barrus Concert Hall. The concert is free and will be livestreamed. You can find more information at byui.edu/music.