By Daniel Buckwalter
I’m sitting beneath the chorale balcony at Central Lutheran Church on a weirdly, yet gloriously, sunny autumn Sunday afternoon.
In front of me in the sanctuary is an audience numbering about 100 people. Above me, with Elray Stewart-Cook leading the way on the organ, Blugene Brass thunders through the stirring opening movement of Johan Sebastian Bach’s Organ concerto, and all felt well.
For almost 90 minutes on Oct. 16, music again served as a soothing balm in response to the swirling madness around us, especially, on this day, the persistent smoky air from the Cedar Creek wildfire near Oakridge, about 45 miles up Highway 58 from Eugene-Springfield.
The five-piece Blugene Brass — founded in 2017 as an all-female ensemble, but now with trumpeters Cody Simmons and Zac Tendick and tuba player Arlo Baratono on the roster along with French horn player Sheri Pyron and trombonist Shira Fadeley — shared their love of a wide and eclectic array of music.
“That’s our shtick,” Pyron noted before the concert.
They will play almost anything.
Bach’s concerto was the opening number for a Blugene Brass concert that smartly mixed the heavy classical (including Joseph Jongen’s Petit Prelude) with the light (Beatles tunes, tangos and George Gershwin, transcribed for brass and with Don Elkington on drums), and the whimsical (Stewart-Cook playing a Czech carol: Out of the Woods a Cuckoo Did Fly).
All of it had the audience leaving with a smile.
Pyron, the founder of the group, hopes to have Blugene Brass play at the Eugene Saturday Market’s annual Holiday Market at the Lane Events Center. And she says the ensemble definitely will play next Memorial Day at the Eugene Masonic Cemetery.
More information about the ensemble’s concerts can be found at Blugene Brass Facebook.
