Second Nature
Justin Weiss composer
Sara Jacovino composer
Hitomi Oba composer
Carle J. Wirshba composer
Lillian Yee composer
Rich Shemaria composer
Calliope Brass
Olivia Pidi Weiss trumpet
Rebecca Steinberg trumpet
Erin Paul Ozolins horn
Sara Mayo trombone
Samantha Lake tuba
As a musical ensemble and non-profit organization, Calliope Brass flourishes in its joint mission of cultivating both entertainment and education. And with the freshly-commissioned contemporary works on SECOND NATURE, this vibrant ensemble proves that innovation lies at the very core of its existence.
Leaning heavily into tailor-made commissions can be an artistic gamble for any musical group, but in this case it pays off. The compositions’ motives are diverse in their representations of nature — meditations on mushrooms, Greek mythology, and modern dating, to name a few — but the performance given by Calliope Brass is one thing only: comprehensively flawless.
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Track Listing & Credits
# | Title | Composer | Performer | |
---|---|---|---|---|
01 | Intersections | Justin Weiss | Calliope Brass | 2:46 |
02 | A Garden Story: Part 1: A Late Winter Hymn | Sara Jacovino | Calliope Brass | 2:27 |
03 | A Garden Story: Part 2: Enter the Deer | Sara Jacovino | Calliope Brass | 2:53 |
04 | A Garden Story: Part 3: The Pollinators | Sara Jacovino | Calliope Brass | 3:13 |
05 | A Garden Story: Part 4: Everything Goes to Sleep | Sara Jacovino | Calliope Brass | 3:36 |
06 | Mycelium Stories | Hitomi Oba | Calliope Brass | 7:57 |
07 | Artemis: Goddess of the Hunt | Carle J. Wirshba | Calliope Brass | 4:42 |
08 | Miracles of the Human Condition: 1. First Meeting | Lillian Yee | Calliope Brass | 1:52 |
09 | Miracles of the Human Condition: 2. Argument | Lillian Yee | Calliope Brass | 4:33 |
10 | Miracles of the Human Condition: 3. Commitment & Healing | Lillian Yee | Calliope Brass | 3:03 |
11 | Miracles of the Human Condition: Coda: Celebration of Marriage Achievement! | Lillian Yee | Calliope Brass | 1:11 |
12 | Pandora's Magic Castle | Rich Shemaria | Calliope Brass | 5:52 |
Recorded January 9–13, 2024 at Corson Auditorium in Interlochen MI
Session Producer Erik Saras
Session Engineer Michael Culler
Editing, Mixing & Mastering Michael Culler
Executive Producer Bob Lord
VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
A&R Jeff LeRoy
VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette
VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Kacie Brown
Digital Marketing Manager Brett Iannucci
Artist Information
Calliope Brass
American quintet Calliope Brass collaborates with the world’s most prominent creatives to build evocative, story-driven concert experiences for a variety of audiences. Inspired by the eponymous storytelling muse in Greek mythology, Calliope Brass (pronounced “Kuh-LIE-uh-pea”) is most known for its innovative approach to creating interactive concert experiences. As a registered nonprofit, Calliope has been awarded grant funding for performance and educational programming since its founding in 2015.
Olivia Pidi Weiss
Trumpet player Olivia Pidi Weiss is an active freelancer in the New York Metropolitan area. She has enjoyed a number of musical performances at Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Regional theaters including the St. James Theater, The Public Theater, and The Paper Mill Playhouse. Most recently, Pidi Weiss held the first trumpet chair at Paper Mill’s 2023 production of Fiddler on the Roof and the trumpet chair at The Shakespeare Theatre of NJ’s 2024 production of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. She was the trumpet fellow of APEX Ensemble (formerly The Montclair Orchestra) and she has performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Reading Symphony Orchestra, and National Concerts Orchestra. Pidi Weiss is a member of the NYC quintet Calliope Brass and frequently performs as a member of the New Jersey Symphony Brass Quintet. Pidi Weiss studied at Manhattan School of Music and Oberlin Conservatory. In addition to performance, Pidi Weiss completed a bachelor’s degree in musicology, with studies focused on early music and musical notation development.
Rebecca Steinberg
Based in New York City, trumpet player Rebecca Steinberg has a career marked by her warm, inviting sound and stylistic versatility. You can find Steinberg in the pit of New York City’s many theater productions, performing alongside her brass quintet Calliope Brass, and teaching music both privately and in the classroom. Steinberg currently holds a trumpet chair in the Tony-nominated Broadway musical SUFFS. In 2023 she held a trumpet chair in the Tony-winning Broadway musical New York, New York. Other notable appearances include SUFFS (The Public Theater), Sound of Music, Sister Act, and Jolly Holiday (Paper Mill Playhouse), City Center Encores! Off-Center production of Stephen Sondheim’s Road Show, Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish at Stage 42, and two National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene productions: The Sorceress and The Golden Bride.
Erin Paul Ozolins
Erin Paul Ozolins is a New York based French hornist, known for a versatile performance career, as a co-founder of the nonprofit ensemble Calliope Brass, and the host of Doublers Podcast. With a mantra of “have horn, will travel,” Ozolins’ diverse resume includes Broadway, Carnegie Hall, the Las Vegas Strip, barns in France, historic theaters in Eastern Europe, and with major artists including Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, and Marie Osmund. As a classical artist, she has appeared with the Sarajevo Philharmonic, Opera Tampa, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Palm Beach Symphony, Florida Grand Opera, and the New Haven Symphony.
Sara Mayo
Sara Mayo is a native of the Pacific Northwest who now splits her time between the West and the East Coast, and therefore now mostly lives in the sky. On the left side of the country, she is the principal trombonist of the Yakima Symphony, and has also previously performed with groups such as the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Symphony Tacoma, the Spokane Symphony, and the Eugene Symphony. On the right side of the country, she works as a freelancer in New York City. She is the tenor trombonist of Calliope Brass and regularly performs with other groups such as the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, the Chelsea Symphony, and anyone else who’ll hire her.
Samantha Lake
Dr. Samantha Lake is a freelance performer and educator in New York City. While performing tuba in multiple ensembles including Calliope Brass, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular Orchestra, Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, and the Ridgefield Symphony, Lake has also earned recognition as a soloist. Her passion for solo performances was ignited when she won the Young Artist Solo Competition in New London CT in 2012, resulting in a solo performance accompanied by the U.S. Coast Guard Band. In the past few years, she has won the Rutgers Concerto Competition, Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp Staff Solo Competition, and University of Connecticut Concerto Competition, and placed second in the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra Instrumental Competition.
Notes
The impetus for recording SECOND NATURE grew from a collection of new works that Calliope Brass was involved in commissioning. Eager to bring new works for brass quintet into the world, Calliope led its first commissioning consortium in 2022, inviting NYC-based composer and trombonist Sara Jacovino to write a multi-movement work for the group. An accomplished jazz artist and gardener, the resulting composition from Jacovino merged the world of jazz harmony with the natural inspirations of her rather impressive, abundant garden. Excited to share this unique piece with a wider audience, the ensemble took stock of a myriad of new works that the group helped bring to life, both through direct commissioning and consortium commissioning alongside brass quintet peers, and discovered a connecting thread: music reflecting and celebrating nature.
The album opens with Justin Weiss’ Intersections, an energetic, textural exploration of the conversion of melody into harmony, and harmony into melody. Next, Jacovino’s A Garden Story will transport listener’s through the seasons and life cycle of the garden, featuring distinctive leitmotif-like motives to represent the curious deer, the buzzing pollinators, the gardener herself, and even a pesky mole. Hitomi Oba’s Mycelium Stories likewise draws on natural inspiration, this time from the dynamic networks of mycelium fungal threads that connect the organisms in a network. The composer notes the similarities between these connections and the relationships and communications that occur between the members of a chamber ensemble, and draws on this idea of varied melodic material spinning around each other, sometimes converging and sometimes growing apart. Carle Wirshba’s Artemis: Goddess of the Hunt inspires mythological wonder through a glimmering opening chorale that grows to a galloping sprint, replete with hunting horn calls. Lilian Yee’s Miracles of the Human Condition touches on another side of nature: human nature. Exploring the stages of a romantic relationship, Yee’s work spans the gamut of style, from mellow lyricism to an agitated samba, evoking an experience of the ups and downs of human emotions. To close the album, Rich Shemaria’s Pandora’s Magic Castle features a driving tuba bass-line and Latin-inspired rhythmic syncopation to paint a musical picture of the mystique of the mythological box.
Calliope Brass is grateful to Interlochen Public Radio for making this recording possible through its Ensemble-In-Residence Program, which allowed the ensemble to retreat to northern Michigan to record this album with the support of the station’s stellar staff.
Videos
“Pandora’s Magic Castle” by Rich Shemaria
From Calliope Brass’ 5th Annual Benefit Concert on November 15, 2022