Tracklist:

1 Richard Strauss: Traumerei am Kamin
2 Antonin Dvorak: Slavonic Dance, Op 72 No. 8
3 Sergei Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky "Russia Under the Mongolian Yoke"
4 Sergei Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky "Song about Alexander Nevsky"
5 Sergei Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky "The Crusaders in Pskov"
6 Sergei Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky "Field of the Dead"
7 Richard Wagner: Bass Trombone Study from Lohengrin
8 Richard Wagner: Study from Gotterdammerung
9 Gustav Mahler: Chorale Study from Symphony No. 6
10 Antonin Dvorak: Symphony No. 6, movement 1

The release of The Trombone Choir Arrangements, Volume One is the culmination of a project that started back in the early 1980's when I transcribed a couple of excerpts as an orchestral study for the low brass section of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, which I still coach to this day. I started with the 1st act of Wagner's Die Walkure and after adding more and more excerpts to these studies, it turned into the "Symphonic Synthesis from Die Walkure," for 8 part trombone choir.

In the mid 1980's, I founded the Chicago Trombone Choir, a 12-16 member group of students and professional players in the Chicago area. Since there was very little repertoire for that sized group I started crafting arrangements of standard symphonic works for this ensemble. Michael Mulcahy and Charles Vernon were both charter members of the choir. This ensemble culminated with our appearance at the 1988 International Trombone Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan. There were two concerts at this festival, featuring my arrangements: one by the Chicago Trombone Choir, and the other by a choir made up of attending members of various professional symphony orchestras.

For a period of six years I made over twenty arrangements for the Chicago Trombone Choir, all twelve part, except for En Saga, by Sibelius which is for an eight voice choir. There are arrangements of movements of standard symphonic fare, but also "studies" in different styles, featuring different challenges of articulation, legato, dynamics, etc.

After kicking around the idea of a professionally recorded trombone choir CD, Noah arranged two recording sessions in the fall of 2014 at the Bridge Studio in Glendale, California. The owner, Greg Curtis, was our mixer and tracking engineer on this project and wanted to capture the organic essence of what we do as trombonists in a choir setting.

The East Meets West Trombone Ensemble is comprised of professional players from the both coasts and in between, who generously donated their time and talents for this project. We recorded all of these pieces on this album over the course of two days, without any rehearsals and without having played together before. The results are stunning, as these arrangements are extremely difficult. I conducted the ensemble.

A small representative of repertoire from these arrangements are presented on this CD, hopefully to inspire the trombone world to propagate this most glorious type of musical sonority.

I want to thank Noah Gladstone for all his inspiration, work and belief in organizing and co-producing this project. Greg Curtis for his fantastic ears, Phil O'Connor who was our diligent tonemeister in the booth and most of all, the amazing talents who so beautifully performed my arrangements. It was a labor of love for all those involved.-Jay Friedman