Kings County Brass
Biography
Kings County Brass is a quintet of Brooklyn residents serving their local community through performances. As educators, we teach at NYU, Ithaca College, LIU Post, and Brooklyn College. Members have performed children’s concerts with Carnegie Hall’s Link Up Orchestra, Harmony Program, and Brooklyn Conservatory and at senior centers and veteran’s homes as members of the Patriot Brass Ensemble. We love performing across the NYC region for audiences of all ages. Our repertoire encompasses a wide range of styles and pieces including standard classical music, jazz, contemporary classical, and new works by Brooklyn composers. Kings County Brass is committed to promoting the voices of BIPOC artists and we plan to commission two composers per season. Throughout the season, each of our concerts is carefully programmed to capture the vision and energy of the Kings County Brass. Our future seasons will be filled with innovative and interactive concerts specialized in serving the many diverse residents of Kings County.
Recipients of the 2021 Brooklyn Arts Council Grant and the 2021 Green / Arts Live Grant, Kings County Brass has performed for communities throughout Brooklyn and across New York City. Through these grants, we performed outside throughout Brooklyn with family concerts in Prospect Park,, Crown Heights, and Flatbush, a concert for seniors in Marine Park, and a live streamed recital open to all.
In addition to performing concerts for the community, Kings County Brass is dedicated to working with composers and commissioning new works for brass quintet. Through our 2021 Brooklyn Arts Council grant, we commissioned and premiered new works from Kalia Vandever and Stefan Zeniuk. We are also extremely passionate about bringing works by historically underrepresented composers into the general brass canon. In addition to developing new works by established composers, Kings County Brass has also workshopped new pieces with local composers at Brooklyn College and recorded their final compositions. Recently, Kings County Brass was featured on Relevant Tones and Access Contemporary Music's Useless Machines program at Roulette, performing Dmitri Tymockzo's Rube Goldberg Variations for brass quintet and prepared piano with pianist Blair McMillen. Kings County Brass is dedicated to making an impact on brass music in New York City, from outreach concerts in local communities to premiering new works and collaborating with living composers.
Kings County Brass members include Kate Amrine and Hugh Ash on trumpet, Blair Hamrick on french horn, Jen Baker on trombone, and Andrew Madej on tuba.
In September, we performed a concert in Marine Park outside the Bay Senior Center. This concert was sponsored by Feed Your Mind Music and we are so grateful for their support in helping us impact our community with music.
