Five Frogs by Jenni Brandon Performed by The Denver Arapahoe Philharmonic

Five Frogs Cover

The Denver area Arapahoe Philharmonic performs Five Frogs by Jenni Brandon on Friday, November 6, 7:30 PM at the Denver First Church of the Nazarene, 3800 E. Hampden Avenue, Cherry Hills Village, CO 80113. The live performance is sold out. However, this is also a Livestreamed Performance. Livestreams tickets are available for purchase.

The program is:

  • Five Frogs – Jenni Brandon
  • Wind Serenade – Antonin Dvořák
  • On Seven-Star-Shoes – Julia Wolfe

Founded in 1953, the Arapahoe Philharmonic is among the longest established, continuously operating musical resources in Colorado. After thriving under two long-tenured conductors, T. Gordon Parks and Vincent C. LaGuardia, Jr., we celebrated our 60th anniversary season (2013-2014) with an exciting new conductor, Devin Patrick Hughes. The orchestra’s musicians are volunteers, playing for the love of music, with a core of compensated section principals who provide technical leadership and help ensure the excellence of performance. The orchestra’s performance repertoire includes the greatest names in classical music, ranging through centuries of master composers, but also featuring those of more recent times.

Five Frogs for woodwind quintet (woodwind quintet sheet music) is inspired by One Hundred Frogs by Hiroaki Sato, a little book that takes a look at one hundred different haikus, sonnets, prose poems, and even limericks based on Bashô’s haiku, “Old Pond/Frog jumps in/The sound of water”. Each of the instruments in the ensemble is so different and so exceptional in their sound and abilities that each one could be one of the frogs from the book. The clarinet is perfect for “Leaping” because of its agility and grace, the way a frog can be still one minute and gone the next. “Catching Bugs” gave me the opportunity to use the piccolo and allow the ensemble to run ‘amuck’ after their bug dinner. Finally, in “Epilogue” all the frogs sing together, each one bringing their own musical motive into this final movement.

“This is a piece that describes frog-like things one appropriate instrument at a time, with the last movement summing it up. Frogs leap – and so do some clarinetists! So, the first movement is called – you guessed it – LEAPING. Frogs sit on lily pads – not easy to do for an oboist. The second movement is therefore called ON THE LILY PAD (as opposed to under it!). The third movement, SWIMMING, is probably something most horn players can do – just not while playing! Would you say that a bassoon can sound like a BULLFROG (but obviously does not look like one)? The fourth movement will convince you! Frogs eat bugs – but do piccoloists? The fifth movement – CATCHING BUGS – sounds just right – all that flittering around! Put it all together and what do you get? The final movement called EPILOGUE – a ribbiting conclusion” states the program notes contributed by Hal Rutenberg, Devin Patrick Hughes.

Published by Boosey & Hawkes. (48018979) woodwind quintet sheet music.