The Marine Band kicks off its Spring 2026 Chamber Music Series at 2 p.m. on Jan. 25 at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington. Coordinated by Trumpet and Cornet Player Staff Sgt. Daniel Taubenheim, the concert will feature Edward Gregson’s Three Dance Episodes performed by a brass septet, Franz Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (“The Shepherd on the Rock”) and more!

The concert is free. No tickets are required.

Program

Location Information

Here’s what Taubenheim had to say about the upcoming performance:

It has been a true joy to put together this program, featuring the breadth of the Marine Band’s capabilities to perform music across multiple centuries and in unique and unusual instrumentations. My focus was to select pieces that varied both in ensemble size, era, mood and instrument pairings to offer the audience a broad tonal spectrum. I think listeners will have fun not only by simply listening to the music being played, but also by taking a special focus on the drastic differences and similarities between all the pieces on the program. I have a personal connection to this program, as we are performing a recently composed piece titled Nothing Less written by my friend and colleague Caleb Hudson, who I have known for the majority of my professional career.

Nearly every instrument group is featured throughout this program, and often in unique ways. You will hear trading lines of fanfare, pastoral melancholy and virtuosic technique between brass instruments in Gregson’s Three Dance Episodes. Antiphonal calls permeate throughout the piece, a common technique employed by brass instrumentalists often in more “echo-y” settings like a church. Of the pieces on this program, Three Dance Episodes is the most homogenous in terms of instrumentation being utilized, with only the brass family represented.

Next, the performance turns to a classic pairing of flute and harp. I can nearly hear a meadow with a gentle stream flowing when I think of these two instruments together!  William Alwyn has taken this concept and written a piece depicting mythological Naiades­ - nymphs that dwell in bodies of water. Flowing streams of music permeate the musical atmosphere, but not without unexpected flurries of activity and suspense midway through the piece.

Following Naiades, a more unusual grouping of instruments is employed in Hudson’s Nothing Less. Featuring flute, bass clarinet, trumpet, violin, and cello the ensemble is nearly a microcosm of a small chamber orchestra in and of itself. Throughout this beautiful four movement piece you will hear every instrument both soloing and blending with each other in various capacities and combinations. No emotional state is overlooked in this piece, from prayerful instrumental dialogue, frenetic dances, moments of jubilation, to complex and often difficult hurdles, Nothing Less is a beautiful new addition to the world’s catalogue of chamber music.

In the first notes of Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen,” translated to “The Shepherd on the Rock,” you will hear piano giving way to beautiful obbligato lines in the clarinet, setting the musical landscape for the entrance of yet another new addition, the voice. Schubert is very well known for his beautiful Lieder, but none feature so prominently, and equally, another solo line – in this case the Clarinet. The piece unfolds in three sections, beginning with depictions of a high alpine setting, to expressions of loneliness and grief interplayed between the voice and clarinet, then a harkening of spring leads way to jubilant cascades of scales and arpeggios brings the work to a bright close.

Finally, we close with Silvestre Revueltas’ Homenage a Federico García Lorca. Another unusual instrumentation is featured here: from piccolo flute to stringed bass, Revueltas uses the tonal landscape to create musical depictions of life after the Spanish Civil War. Haunting laments, jaunty rhythms and distorted Spanish dances lead way to mournful elegies. Brilliant depictions of Mariachi bring the program to a close, a summation of the instrument palates heard from the beginning of this program to the end.