Flash!

Sandstorm Brass
Richard Marshall, Alan Morrison, Nick Hudson, Sandy Smith and Shaun Crowther.
Egon Publications: SFZ104
Playing Time: Approx 65 mins

~ Buy with 4barsrest shopping

Jim Shepherd and his Versatile Brass have a lot to answer for. Ever since he set up the groundbreaking group as far back as the early 1970's there have been any number of others who have tried to emulate their success. The variations on the "Versatile" theme have been many and varied, from quartets to small ensembles from trombones to percussion, but all owe a great debt to the foresight of the great man Shepherd in actually creating a market for these type of performers.

Some have been more successful than others, with the main stumbling block to overcome being the lack of specialised repertoire available to the groups to perform. This is why the creation of Sandstorm Brass has made such an immediate impact as the vast majority of their repertoire has been written and arranged by Sandy Smith, whilst the quality of the group's personnel cannot be questioned.

Flash! – is their first foray into the CD world and on the evidence they will be a group that will be around for a long time. Although not as groundbreaking as Jim Shepherd and his boys, Sandstorm are original enough to maintain and develop their niche in a very competitive market – and that's what it's all about.

The CD features 25 separate tracks from 11 items as diverse as "Five Elizabethan Dances" arranged by Alan Fernie to "Songs of the American Dream" by Martin Ellerby.

As with any CD from a small ensemble some tracks work better than others and at times some of the content sounds very much of a muchness, but the vast majority of the pieces are new to us and are very well arranged to suit the group. The only two qualms we have about the presentation of the CD is that the titles of the pieces on the back cover are awful and wrongly numbered and take a bit of deciphering whilst tracks 18 and 19 are actually printed the wrong way around to how they are played. Still, we loved the bonkers cover, which in no way made an effort to make the boys look pretty!

The strength of the CD lies in the quality of the playing, which is of the highest class and also in the quality of many of the tracks which come from composers as diverse as Joseph Horovitz, Alan Fernie, Martin Ellerby and Ron Goodwin as well as Sandy Smith himself. They nearly all work, but we would have liked to hear more muted playing to add different timbres or slightly different instrumentation such as the introduction of an occasional flugel line or even percussion.

The up beat works are brilliantly played, yet the most satisfying playing for us came in the "Five Elizabethan Dances" and "Songs of the American Dream" which are superb pieces of small brass ensemble playing and arranging. The Horovitz "Folk Song Fabtasy" is two-minute gem whilst the "Gymnopedie No1" and "Air from the Suite in D" show very near perfect balance and intonation between the players – a model of class playing.

"Struth!" by Chris Hazell and "Ain't Misbehavin" are a bit cheesy and don't come off as well against the rest of the stuff on display, but Ron Goodwin's "Suite for Brass" is slick and elegant. Alan Fernie's "Two Spirituals" in the right order are clever bits of writing and the title track "Flash!" is neatly done.

With players of this standard we were not disappointed at all with the playing and were very pleasantly surprised by the scope of the repertoire on offer. After hearing them on the stage at the Albert Hall, we think we have the natural successors to Jim Shepherd and his Versatile Brass as the group have a nice relaxed stage presence to go with the qualities of their playing and repertoire. Sandstorm Brass have taken their role very seriously (even if they do have to dress up as cartoon Firefighters on the CD cover!) and it shows in the commitment to a high class release. Well done lads!

~ Buy with 4barsrest shopping

^back to top