Customer Reviews

Deja View

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Blue Shades is awesome, such dynamics. Close your eyes when you listen to it, you can actually see the different shades of blue before your eyes. Technique and quality is superb, and another wonderfull conducting job. Its emotions will have you tired.

Anyone who thinks that bands today play only Sousa marches and pop tunes will be knocked out of their socks and shoes when they hear this (or any other North Texas) recording. Several friends of mine that were in band (high school and college) often ask me what band music is like today, especially if they haven't heard any in the past 10-15 years. When they hear this group, they are stunned.

Band directors and those who follow the band world have known about these recordings for years, but sadly much of the general public thinks that band music is either boring or of a very low quality. Not so. Eugene Corporon and many others like him have done an outstanding job of programming quality band works and bringing them before the public. Composers who would never have considered writing music for concert band 15 or 20 years ago are now very eager to compose for the wind band. Times have changed and it's an exciting time for band literature.

Deja Vu opens with Adam Gorb's "Awayday," which the composer describes as "Gershwin, Bernstein, Stravinsky, and James Bond traveling together at a hundred miles per hour in an open-top sports car." It is an exciting, enegetic, fun piece. The disc closes with one of the most exciting pieces to be written for band in the past several years, Frank Ticheli's "Blue Shades," an electrifying blues/jazz powerhouse that brings to mind the Big Band era and more. In between these pieces is even more great music of various styles from outstanding composers such as Michael Colgrass and Leslie Bassett.

Mr. Corporon is dedicated to taking band music to another level. The North Texas recordings feature the highest quality music recorded with state-of-the-art equipment. A very fine disc!

Blue Shades is probably one of the best band works I have ever heard and played. I played alto sax on this piece at a music camp last year, and Ticheli's complex layering of flat thirds, fifths, and sevenths is just absolutely delicous. Get it.

Very pleased with the promptness of delivery. However, the CD is damaged. The quality of the CD is fine, with the exception of one track, which happened to be the track that I purchased the CD for. It is faulty and does not play - I was very disappointed