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Organ & Brass
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Click
to enlarge* |
As I
mentioned earlier, Dr. Robin Dinda performed
with Boston Brass on numerous occasions. Our meeting in 1989 led to many good things. |
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occasion of our meeting occurred when the
quintet participated in a two week series of
elementary school performances in Nashua, New
Hampshire.
I thought it would add a nice touch to
present a full concert on the evening of the
final school performance.
The hope was that students from the
school performances would attend this concert. |
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site that was selected was a Congregational church that
had just hired a new organist.
That was how we came to meet Robin Dinda.
The church sanctuary quite tall, in a kind of
diamond shape, and not too deep. Because of it's height the acoustics we quite respectable.
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After
that event, Boston Brass became the "house
quintet" for Christmas and Easter services.
On Easter we usually had a 7:00 am rehearsal and
two church services (and for the two trumpeters, this was
quite soon after a late night Easter Vigil service
somewhere; at least once it coincided with the time change
-- man, that was EARLY!).
The highlight of that morning was always the
delicious spread of homemade breakfast goodies, supplied
by the choir at 10:00 am.
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Dr.
Dinda is also a talented composer.
For the church services he would write fun hymn
descants. What a delight to play excellent music in that kind of
setting!
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| Boston
Brass joined forces with Robin for many concerts in the
Boston area. One
of the most thrilling was at the magnificent Methuen
Memorial Music Hall.
This rather outwardly plain-looking building was
built with the express purpose of housing the gigantic
pipe organ inside.
The interior of the building looks like the most
ornate wedding cake you can imagine. |
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| This
organ was the original organ of the Boston Symphony
Orchestra. There
is remarkable wood carving all over the front of it.
You can see a picture of it at this LINK. Look closely and you can see five tiny people in front of it
-- that's Boston Brass. |
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| The
pitch of this organ is so much lower than normal tuning
that we all had to have our tuning slides about 3/4 of
the way out. And
the organ itself has a slight delay between the moment
the keys are depressed and when the sound actually
occurs. Needless
to say, we were on our toes for that concert.
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| Dr.
Dinda soon wrote some original works for quintet and
organ. The
one that was always a crowd pleaser was called "Septimi
Tempi". The
title is a tip-of-the-hat to the titles of the music of
Giovanni Gabrieli (and his titles like "Canzon
septimi toni", "Canzon septimi octavi toni"
and "Canzon duodecimi toni").
The difference here is that while Gabrieli's
music was often built on the seventh ("septimi")
tone, Dr. Dinda's was built on the seventh beat -- that
is, the piece was written in the unusual time signature
of 7/8. |
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| Robin
also blessed us with the premieres of a number of other
works. One
that stands out is the "Nocturne".
We had commented that much of the repertoire for
organ and brass was often highly spirited.
So he created a beautiful and moving work that
shows the restrained side of brass and organ. |
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Robin
also wrote a three movement work for solo trumpet and
organ. It was
my good fortune and pleasure to give its initial
performance in 1997.
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