Onyx Brass: Various Composers at Kings Place

For 20 years, Onyx Brass has been at the top of the international brass chamber music world, and they make their Kings Place debut as part of the Bach Unwrapped season. Drawing from their CDs Fugue and Time to Time, Onyx pairs their own arrangements of fugues by Bach and Shostakovich with new works by composer-in-association Timothy Jackson, Joe Duddell, and the world premiere of an Onyx Brass commission from Jacques Cohen. Centred around the intimate and focused Well-Tempered Clavier fugues and their descendants by Shostakovich, the programme stretches back from the world premiere of Jacques Cohen's Concertino to the Dance Suite from Elizabethan composer Anthony Holborne. It takes in the majestic opening of Handel's Ode on the Birthday of Queen Anne, Eternal Source of Light Divine and then moves on to contemporary pieces like Joe Duddell's Still Life, which itself harks back to the musical world of Bach with references to a harpsichord concerto and a chorale style.