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Everything Must Go!
for brass quintet (1992)
Premiere
15 September 1992
Bryant Park, New York City
Brass Ensemble of the Orchestra of St. Luke's
Instrumentation
tpt.tpt.hn.trbn.tba
Duration
14'

Program Note
Composed for the Encore Brass Quintet, New York City, Everything Must Go! was completed at Yaddo on 21 June 1992. 'The piece has four ideas --' writes the composer, 'a groove consisting of a sixteen-beat-long, repeated ostinato that evolves over the course of the piece, a melody, a chorale fragment, and a skein of running sixteenth notes that I call the snake.' The entire piece consists of continual collaging of these four ideas in different ways.'

The first professional performance took place on 15 September, 1992 in Bryant Park, New York City. The Brass Ensemble of the Orchestra of St. Luke's performed. Performances at the Aspen Music Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, and the Spoleto Festival have cemented the work's popularity as a tour de force virtuoso showpiece for brass quintet.

--- Bill Rhoads, 2003
Reviews
...a splashing, yet lyrical blast of a piece, which gave the sizable audience an example of the best brass quintet writing today.
--- Jack Dressler, The Post and Courier, Charleston, NC