Dallas Brass Opens Distinguished Artist Series

by Richard Veit

Dallas Brass will open the 1998-99 Distinguished Artist Series at Baylor University at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, in Jones Concert Hall.
Though Dallas Brass was formed in Texas, the group is now based in the Chicago area and performs to audiences worldwide. Michael Levine, the director, is a Minneapolis native who performed for four years as trombonist in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He founded Dallas Brass in 1983. Other members of this stellar ensemble are trumpeters Chuck Lazarus and Robert Murray, trombonist Jay Evans, tubist Dan Satterwhite, and percussionist Dan Hostetler.
More than anything else, a Dallas Brass concert is fun. In Michael Levine's words, "A Dallas Brass show is designed to reach the entire family--with music from the great classics to ragtime, Dixieland, swing, Broadway, Hollywood, patriotic and popular styles. Now, in the 1990s, it is more important than ever for parents and their children to experience a live cultural event together. We present the music in a theatrical, light-hearted manner. Our goal is to create a memorable evening ... to be entertaining, enriching, and a good time for all."
The Baylor concert will span 400 years of music history, from masterpieces of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods to the musicals, film scores, jazz and pop standards of our own day. Typical Dallas Brass programs feature pieces by such composers as Bach, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Bernstein, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Benny Goodman, and John Philip Sousa, as well as familiar themes from the films of Walt Disney.
General admission tickets are $12, and $8 for Baylor students, faculty, staff and senior citizens. For more information, call 710-3991. Future concerts in Baylor's Distinguished Artist Series will include The Kronos Quartet (on November 12) and The Tallis Scholars (on March 18).