Boston Brass

Since 1986 Boston Brass has set out to establish a one-of-a-kind musical experience, featuring colorful
classical arrangements, burning jazz standards, and the best of original brass repertoire. Boston Brass treats
audiences to a unique brand of musical entertainment that bridges the ocean of classical formality to delight
regular concertgoers and newcomers alike with great music and boisterous fun. The quintet has played to
audiences in all 50 U.S. states, and over 30 countries. Though the band regularly concertizes as a quintet,
Boston Brass also performs with orchestras, concert and marching bands, organists, and jazz bands, and
regularly collaborates with composers to create new works for the brass canon.

Music education is at the core of Boston Brass’s identity and the quintet conducts sessions around the world in
the form of masterclasses, residencies and collaborations, everywhere from your local band rooms to major
music conservatories. The quintet has longstanding relationships, most notably with Yong Siew Toh
Conservatory of Singapore and North Dakota State University’s Challey School of Music, both schools having
named Boston Brass “Visiting Ensemble in Residence” starting in 2024. In conjunction with the Yamaha
Corporation, the quintet engaged in a 2018 tour of major Chinese music conservatories, and in 2021 the
members of Boston Brass were appointed to the International Artist Advisory Council to the College of Music at
Mahidol University in Thailand. The Boston Brass have been featured as educators and performers at the
Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles, American Band
College, Western International Band Clinic, and at innumerable state music education conferences. After a
long hiatus, 2022 finally saw the return of the Boston Brass Summer Intensive in its new home at NDSU’s
Challey School of Music. In 2024, Boston Brass was inducted into the prestigious American Bandmasters
Association as associate members for the ensemble’s contributions to music education.

Unique collaborations are central to the Boston Brass mission, and in 2025, Boston Brass and Imani Winds will
team up for their first collaboration in over a decade to present a new composition by the great Arturo
Sandoval. Recently released in 2023 is the album Joe’s Tango, which introduces our world premiere of Jorge
Machain’s Five Cities Concerto alongside selections by trombonist Joe Alessi and the UNLV Wind Orchestra.
Boston Brass continues to give performances of Grammy winning composer Gordon Goodwin’s Perplexing
Times which had its world premiere in 2022. Featuring the quintet with wind ensemble and jazz rhythm section,
Perplexing Times brims with Goodwin’s trademark tongue in cheek compositional style.

The quintet’s newest release Blues for Sam (2022) features a mix of classical and jazz arrangements
alongside old Boston Brass favorites, and is dedicated to the late Sam Pilafian who can also be heard on the
albums Simple Gifts (2018), Reminiscing (2016), and Rewired (2015). Latin Nights (2008) features a collection
of some of the greatest classical and jazz works by Latin composers and features the legendary drummer
Steve Gadd, the beautiful voice of Talita Real, plus percussion and guitar. Other albums include Ya Gotta Try,
featuring music from Horace Silver, Chick Corea and Dizzy Gillespie, produced by legendary jazz recording

Turtle Island

Since its inception in 1985, the Turtle Island Quartet has been a singular force in the creation of bold, new trends in chamber music for strings. Winner of the 2006 and 2008 Grammy Awards for Best Classical Crossover Album, Turtle Island fuses the classical quartet esthetic with contemporary American musical styles, and by devising a performance practice that honors both, the state of the art has inevitably been redefined. Cellist nonpareil Yo-Yo Ma has proclaimed TIQ to be “a unified voice that truly breaks new ground – authentic and passionate – a reflection of some of the most creative music-making today.”

The Quartet’s birth was the result of violinist David Balakrishnan’s brainstorming explorations and compositional vision while completing his master’s degree program at Antioch University West. The journey has taken Turtle Island through forays into folk, bluegrass, swing, be-bop, funk, R&B, new age, rock, hip-hop, as well as music of Latin America and India…a repertoire consisting of hundreds of ingenious arrangements and originals. It has included over a dozen recordings on labels such as Windham Hill, Chandos, Koch, Telarc, Azica, and Blue Note, soundtracks for major motion pictures, TV and radio credits such as the Today Show, All Things Considered, Prairie Home Companion, and Morning Edition, feature articles in People and Newsweek magazines, and collaborations with famed artists such as trumpeter Terence Blanchard, clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, guitar legends such as Leo Kottke and the Assad brothers, The Manhattan Transfer, pianists Billy Taylor, Kenny Barron, Cyrus Chestnut and Ramsey Lewis, singers Tierney Sutton and Nellie McKay, the Ying Quartet and the Parsons and Luna Negra Dance Companies.

Another unique element of Turtle Island is their revival of venerable improvisational and compositional chamber traditions that have not been explored by string players for nearly 200 years. At the time of Haydn’s apocryphal creation of the string quartet form, musicians were more akin to today’s saxophonists and keyboard masters of the jazz and pop world, i.e., improvisers, composers, and arrangers. Each Turtle Island member is accomplished in these areas of expertise.

As Turtle Island members continue to refine their skills through the development of repertory by some of today’s cutting edge composers, through performances and recordings with major symphonic ensembles, and through a determined educational commitment, the Turtle Island Quartet stakes its claim as the quintessential ‘New World’ string quartet of the 21st century.