4.1

This is a digital album that contains each track as both an MP3 and WAV file for higher fidelity.

“4.1” was our first full recording as a trombone quartet. It was recorded in September 2008 and released in March 2010, and includes our former colleague, Steve Lange, now of the Boston Symphony. We included music from the standard trombone repertoire about which we felt we had something to say. Also, original in the trombone quartet literature, is Conrad Henning’s beautiful transcription of Francis Poulenc’s Four Prayers of St. Francis of Assisi. The cover photograph, taken from the stage of Powell Symphony Hall, is by Ray Meibaum.

We spent endless hours in Steve’s basement rehearsing, talking about the music, matching our sounds, lengths of notes, shapes of phrases, and going off on tangents (at one point, we thought of calling our group “Tangent”). For 4.1, we believed strongly in all of the pieces we recorded, but two of those pieces, Tim’s resetting of the Gabrieli Sonata XV “con tre violini” and Conrad Henning’s beautiful transcription of Poulenc’s Four Prayers of St. Francis, began our trend of finding, arranging, or composing our own music.

The title 4.1 symbolized, for us, four musicians coming together for one purpose. If you missed it in 2010, we hope you’ll give it a listen now.