A Vintage Brass Christmas
Springfield, IL; October 24, 2009 – The Vintage Brass Band of Springfield, IL presents A Vintage Brass Christmas on Saturday at 8:00 p.m. December 12, at First Presbyterian Church, 321 South 7th St., Springfield, IL. Tickets are $10 and will be available at the door.
The Vintage Brass Band will perform 17th Century antiphonal music by Giovanni Gabrielli, 19th Century American band music with a local connection, and traditional holiday carols. Additionally, featured vocal soloist, soprano Mona Kreitner from Memphis, TN, will perform coloratura European Masterworks with historical significance to the American Band movement.
About Mona Kreitner
Soprano Mona Kreitner specializes in the virtuoso vocal music of seventeenth-century Italy and the repertoire of the coloratura sopranos from America’s “Gilded Age.” She has appeared as a soloist with the Memphis Symphony, Germantown Symphony, the Memphis Chamber Choir, and the Kamran Ince Ensemble. Since 2002 Mona has been the soprano soloist for The Great Western Rocky Mountain Brass Band. She is active as a musicologist, presenting papers at regional and national meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for American Music. She is also a contributor to the forthcoming revised edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music.
Mona earned an MM and Performer’s Certificate in voice from The Eastman School of Music, and holds the PhD in historical musicology from the University of Memphis. Her dissertation, “A Splendid Group of American Girls”: The Women Who Sang with the Sousa Band, won the University music graduate document award in 2008. Mona is on the music faculties at the University of Memphis and Rhodes College, where she teaches applied voice, Women in Music, and music history
About the Vintage Brass Band
The Vintage Brass Band of Springfield, Illinois, formed in March of 2009, is the Capital City’s only up-and-coming professional brass ensemble. The band includes a talented mix of professional musicians and accomplished local amateurs under the baton of R. Todd Cranson.
Founded in 2009, the VBB specializes in performing American brass music with great historical and cultural significance, much of which has not been performed for 100 or more years! Artistic Director Todd Cranson’s research and collaboration with leading scholars in the field of early American band music provides the Vintage Brass Band with a diverse and interesting repertoire which includes vintage concert, popular, and dance music from the 1840′s through the turn of the 20th Century, military and patriotic music of the Civil War era, and art music from all periods of American history.
The VBB is particularly proud to perform repertoire from three special collections with historic significance to our local community: the Benjamin Grierson Collection (Jacksonville, IL, 1840′s- 1860′s), music of the Humboldt Brass Band (Humboldt, KS, 1865-1880′s), and the X.X.O.B. Band Collection (Williamsville, IL, 1900-1930′s). Selections from the Grierson Collection are featured on A Vintage Brass Christmas.
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