American Music for Trumpet and Piano
A new album by Aleksander Kobus, principal trumpeter of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, recorded with pianist Monika Hanus-Kobus and trombonist Eloy Paniz Padrón. American Music for Trumpet and Piano features works by North American composers written between 1953 and 2011.
American Music for Trumpet and Piano
A new album by Aleksander Kobus, principal trumpeter of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, recorded with pianist Monika Hanus-Kobus and trombonist Eloy Paniz Padrón. American Music for Trumpet and Piano features works by North American composers written between 1953 and 2011.
Album premiere: 20.12.2024
Publisher: National Forum of Music, CD Accord
Performers: Aleksander Kobus, Monika Hanus-Kobus, Eloy Panizo Padrón
“In the United States, the trumpet is power. It leads jazz parades and bids farewell to fallen soldiers, plays in marching bands, mariachi groups, and on university campuses. Both John Williams and Duke Ellington wrote concertos for trumpet and orchestra; it also plays an important role in Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question and Aaron Copland’s Quiet City.
This instrument, tied up with numerous traditions, has a much higher status in the New World than in Poland or other countries of the Old Continent. Hence the choice of repertoire for the album and its focus on composers from the United States, as Aleksander Kobus, the originator and protagonist of the recording, pointed out in a conversation with me.
The principal trumpeter of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic has visited the US several times, not
only during orchestral tours. At the annual meeting of the International Trumpet Guild, held in San Antonio, Texas, he performed Halsey Stevens’ Sonata. He is one of the many composers celebrated in the Guild, as are Allen Vizzutti and Eric Ewazen. According to a publisher, the latter’s brass pieces sell like hot cakes in the US. These composers receive numerous commissions from the International Trumpet Guild, and their compositions quickly enter the academic and competition repertoire. And so it goes.
The choice of only North American composers makes the album coherent, at the same time showing different facets of Neoclassicism and tonality in contemporary music. From the classic Stevens, through representatives of the middle generation – Joseph Turrin, Bruce Broughton or Vizzutti and Ewazen – to the youngest in this group, Kevin McKee. All of them contribute to the continuation of the North American repertoire, which has long been an important point of reference for the Polish trumpeter and his wife. (…)” Jan Topolski
