Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Performing Arts Center will present the Millennium Brass Quintet on April 3 at 3 p.m. in Hodgson Concert Hall in the UGA Performing Arts Center, 230 River Rd., Athens. The Millennium Brass performance will serve as the annual Payne Memorial Concert, honoring the former dean of Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, William Jackson “Jack” Payne, who established the university’s popular chamber music series in 1978. The performance, part of the Franklin College Chamber Music Series, is free and no tickets are required.
The Millennium Brass Quintet brings together five of America’s finest brass players: Vince DiMartino, trumpet; Richard Illman, trumpet; Lisa O. Bontrager, horn; Scott Hartman, trombone; and Marty Erickson, tuba. At home in jazz and pops styles as well as the classical idiom, the members of Millennium Brass have performed as soloists and section members with many of America’s leading orchestras, including those in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Minnesota, Rochester, St. Louis and Washington.
The Millennium Brass musicians also have appeared with many of the world’s most famous stars, including Burt Bacharach, Pearl Bailey, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles, the Fifth Dimension, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Bob Hope, Henry Mancini, and Doc Severinsen. With a repertoire that ranges from brass band chestnuts to ragtime to jazz, the Millennium Brass brings variety to its concert programs. A typical Millennium Brass concert can feature selections by Mozart, John Philip Sousa, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Fats Waller, Stephen Foster, and perhaps even a song from Meredith Willson’s The Music Man.
The members of the Millennium Brass also are nationally respected educators. They now hold or have held faculty appointments at prestigious colleges and universities such as Boston University, the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University, the University of Kentucky, Michigan State University, New England Conservatory, and Penn State University.
For more information, see www.uga.edu/pac or call 706/542-4400.
