My composing has slowed to a crawl lately and my live performances are pretty much nonexistent, but I managed to squeeze out a fresh composition last week, a little bit of fugue-like brassiness for your fantastical enjoyment.
My composing has slowed to a crawl lately and my live performances are pretty much nonexistent, but I managed to squeeze out a fresh composition last week, a little bit of fugue-like brassiness for your fantastical enjoyment.
Yours portly has three albums releasing on 1 September 2025. I’ve been sharing some of the pieces from one of those upcoming releases, Ringtone Circus, the past few weeks. This week’s composition is the last one I wrote for that album.
The piece is a fanfare, and I wanted to see what “fanfare” would be in Latin. The first result was “Ambitione,” but as a I dug deeper, it seems that one possible way to write it is “Tubae Sonitus,” literally “trumpet song.” Apparently, our word “tuba” was the Latin word for trumpet.
Regardless, I like the title and I like the piece. I hope you do, too!
Fifteen years ago today, on 4 July 2010, my old brass band, Brass to the Future, played an outdoor concert in a park in my hometown of Aiken, South Carolina. It was a bit of a “guerrilla” concert, in that we did not ask permission, but just showed up in the park and started playing for our fans.
In the spirit of Independence Day, I’m featuring rare footage from that concert today.
Apparently, I failed to make videos for all of the pieces on Leftovers IV. Indeed, I neglected to upload a lot of the goodies that I usually include with digital purchases of albums; that has now been rectified.
So I am back to looking at some tracks from that short EP. This week’s has the most ridiculous title of any piece I’ve ever composed: “Skiddle-Diddle-Diddle-Dee (Dit-Dit-Dit)”:
Years ago, yours portly was in a brass ensemble called Brass to the Future. Yes, I play saxophone, which is a woodwind instrument, but the guys let me join—ha! Our gimmick was playing instrumental arrangements of classic hair metal tunes and some modern pop. I did most of the arrangements for the group.
Needless to say, I love the warmth and fullness of brass instruments. It’s not surprising, then, that I’ve been composing more lately with brass instruments, especially the trombone (which my younger brother played in BttF for many years).
As such, here are some recent editions of Open Mic Adventures featuring some of my (digital) brass compositions:
Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments: