Baylor Brass Quintet Plays Bernstein Feb. 9

by Richard Veit

For their 1999 spring concert, the Baylor University Brass Quintet will present a Leonard Bernstein program, including some rarely heard but very engaging "canine" pieces. The concert will take place at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9, in Roxy Grove Hall.
Opening the program will be "Fanfare for Bima," a short work dating from around 1950. Bima was conductor Serge Koussevitzky's black cocker spaniel, and this fanfare is constructed upon a theme that was whistled in the Koussevitzky household to call the pet.
Similarly, "Rondo for Lifey" was written by Bernstein in affectionate tribute to Lifey, which was screen comedienne Judy Holliday's little Skye terrier.
During that same year, Bernstein composed three brief pieces in memory of Mippy, a mongrel belonging to his brother, Burtie. They are entitled "Elegy for Mippy I," "Elegy for Mippy II," and "Waltz for Mippy."
Concluding the program will be music that is much more familiar to concert audiences than the lighthearted canine pieces -- a suite for brass from Bernstein's popular 1957 musical, West Side Story.
Members of the Baylor Brass Quintet are associate professor of trumpet Barry Hopper, his student Oscar García-Montoya (a sophomore from San Ramón, Costa Rica), assistant professor of horn Margaret Robinson, assistant professor of trombone David Jackson and lecturer in tuba Michael Fischer.
They will be assisted by assistant professor of piano John Cozza, who also serves the School of Music as Coordinator of the Piano Accompanying Program.
This concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.