Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble: 'Music of the Reformation'

The Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble will perform music by composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, and others in a centuries-spanning program titled “Music of the Reformation."

Free and open to the public, the Gargoyle ensemble concert, presented by Church of the Gesu, will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, at the church, 1145 W. Wisconsin Ave. Reservations aren’t required. For information, call Church of the Gesu at (414) 288-7101 or visit gargoylebrass.com.

“The hour-long concert program commemorates the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation in Germany in 1517,” said Rodney Holmes, founder and artistic director of the Gargoyle ensemble. “Audiences will hear five centuries worth of music embracing the most famous melodies written by Reformation leader Martin Luther, who was a composer as well as a religious figure.”

The program includes James Curnow’s contemporary “Rejouissance: Fantasia on ‘Ein feste Burg,’” for organ; Heinrich Schütz’s “Three Becker Psalms,” Op. 5, a Baroque work for brass quartet; Bach’s chorale preludes for organ “Wir glaüben all an einen Gott,” BWV 680, “Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu dir,” BWV 687, and “Fantasia super ‘Komm, Heiliger Geist,’” BWV 651; and Otto Nicolai’s early Romantic “Ecclesiastical Festival Overture on the chorale ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,’” Op. 31, arranged for brass and organ by Craig Garner.

Also: Mendelssohn’s Organ Sonata No. 6 in D Minor, Op. 65, which quotes Luther’s hymn “Vater unser im Himmelreich”; Randall E. Faust’s contemporary “Fantasy” on the hymn “Von Himmel hoch,” for horn and organ; and Garner’s brass and organ arrangement, “Introduction and Finale,” from Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, “Reformation,” Op. 107.

Performers will include Madison-based organist Jared Stellmacher, an award-winning musician heard on the Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble’s critically acclaimed 2015 debut CD “Flourishes, Tales and Symphonies.” He holds a master’s degree in music from Yale University.

Gargoyle brass players will include trumpeters Lev Garbar and Andrew Hunter, horn player Kathryn Swope, trombonist Karen Mari, and artistic director Holmes on tuba.

Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble

“The Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble plays with warmth, elegance, and panache,” said U.S. music magazine Fanfare in a review of the ensemble’s debut CD. “[They] are perfect companions for the music lover in need of calming nourishment.”

The group takes its whimsical name from the stone figures atop gothic buildings at the University of the Chicago, where the now-professional ensemble got its start in 1992 as a brass quintet of faculty and students. Under its founder and artistic director Rodney Holmes, it has evolved over the decades into an independent organization of classically trained musicians that focuses on commissioning and performing groundbreaking new works and arrangements for brass and pipe organ. More information at gargoylebrass.com.