Brass Roots Trio To Paint Musical Portrait of U.S. at Sept. 17 Concert

The Brass Roots Trio will perform at 7 p.m. CT on Friday, Sept. 17, in the W.W. Slider
Humanities Center Recital Hall. From left: Rosetta Senkus Bacon, Nathan Warner
and Kyra Sims.

The Brass Roots Trio will present "American Impressions" at 7 p.m. CT on Friday, Sept. 17, in the Lindsey Wilson W.W. Slider Humanities Center Recital Hall. The concert -- which is part of the 2010-11 Lindsey Wilson College Cultural Affairs Series -- is free and open to the public.

The Brass Roots Trio features three musicians who combine to make a multitude of sounds on an unlikely collaboration of instruments -- piano, French horn, trumpet, flugelhorn and voice. The trio displays virtuosity and exquisite sounds that blend the classical music genre with jazz, ragtime and contemporary styles.

The Sept. 17 concert at Lindsey Wilson will include arrangements of pieces by Irving Berlin, Dave Brubeck, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Scott Joplin and Fats Waller. Most of the pieces have been arranged by the trio's pianist and founder, Rosetta Senkus Bacon.

"I started the idea of this trio back in 2001 with a couple local musicians -- we were fooling around and putting things together, and it evolved out of that," Bacon said. "The hard thing was finding music for it, so that's why I got into arranging. … That left it open for us to do any kind of music we wanted. That's why we have a big variety of music from classical to jazz to everything in between."

The first two selections scheduled to be played on Sept. 17 at Lindsey Wilson provide a glimpse of the kind of musical diversity embraced by the Brass Roots Trio: the concert will open with an arrangement of Bill Joel's obscure but entertaining "Root Beer Rag" and then follow it with an arrangement of Aaron Copland's expansive "Rodeo."

Bacon said one of the concert's aims is to paint a portrait of American diversity -- from the East Coast through Appalachia and the Mississippi River regions to the open West. 

"It's painting a picture of the country," she said. "It's painting an image of our country" through music.

In addition to Bacon on piano, the Brass Roots Trio includes Kyra Sims on horn and vocals and Nathan Warner on trumpet and flugelhorn. All three musicians live in Greater New York, but they have very different roots: Bacon grew up in West Virginia and was educated at West Virginia University; Sims is from Memphis, Tenn., and was educated at the University of Kansas School of Fine Arts; and Warner is a native Hoosier who was educated at the Indiana University School of Music.

Now in their seventh season of concerts, the Brass Roots Trio's tours have taken them all over the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2009 the trio was honored to perform at the White House.

"That was quite an honor. It was a little bit of a Cinderella night for me," Bacon said.

The Brass Roots Trio will present "American Impressions" at 7 p.m. CT on Friday, Sept. 17, in the Lindsey Wilson College W.W. Slider Humanities Center Recital Hall. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, contact LWC Cultural Affairs Chair Phil Hanna at hannap@lindsey.edu or (270) 384-8250.

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Click here for the full 2010-11 LWC Cultural Affairs Series.