Department of Music presents internationally renowned Sotto Voce

March 8, 2013

The Georgia Southern University Department of Music will host the internationally recognized tuba/euphonium quartet Sotto Voce on Sunday, March 10, and Monday, March 11. While on campus, Sotto Voce will perform master classes and present a concert with the University’s Symphonic Wind Ensemble. 

The highly acclaimed, internationally recognized Sotto Voce Quartet is America’s premiere professional low-brass quartet and has become one of the world’s leading low brass ensembles. The quartet challenges traditional notions about tubas by composing, arranging, and commissioning virtuosic new works that highlight the diversity of their ensemble and its unique membership. Sotto Voce has three records on the Summit Records label – Consequences, Viva Voce and Refractions – and has recently recorded a fourth album, Take This Hammer, which will be available later this year.

Sotto Voce performances have been showcased on Performance Today and their recordings are often played on NPR stations throughout the U.S., and the ensemble maintains an active international touring schedule in the U.S., Canada and Europe. In the past two years, they performed concerts in Austria, France, Canada, California, Wyoming, Wisconsin, and along the East Coast. The quartet has held prominent performing/judging roles in the past six International Tuba/Euphonium Conferences and has also been invited to give concerts and clinics at various state music educator conferences including the prestigious Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic. 

The artists who make up the quartet have diverse careers in music and are regularly in demand as performers, composers and clinicians: Demondrae Thurman is an associate professor of tuba/euphonium at the University of Alabama, where he is also the director of orchestra studies. Demondrae performs regularly with the Atlanta Symphony and the Brass Band of Battle Creek. Mark Carlson, assistant professor of music at Mount Saint Mary’s University, teaches applied low brass and directs the university’s instrumental ensembles. Nat McIntosh is a cofounder of and sousaphonist with the YoungBlood Brass Band. McIntosh is an active guest soloist and freelance musician on all low brass instruments. Mike Forbes is best known for his compositions and arrangements and is a Carl Fischer Composer. He the principal tubist with the LaCrosse Symphony Orchestra and founder of the Isthmus Brass, Wisconsin’s premiere large brass ensemble.  

The master class will be Sunday at 7:30 p.m. in the Carol A. Carter Recital Hall of the University’s Foy Building and will feature Sotto Voce working with the Georgia Southern Tuba/Euphonium Ensemble and selected soloists from the low brass studio of Richard Mason, D.M., assistant professor of trombone and low brass. On Monday, Sotto Voce will perform as a solo quartet and with the University’s Symphonic Wind Ensemble under the direction of Director of Bands Robert Dunham, D.M., at 7:30 p.m. in Georgia Southern’s Performing Arts Center. Both events are free and open to the public and both are funded in part due to a grant from the Campus Life Enrichment Committee.

For more information, contact Mason at rlmason@georgiasouthern.edu.