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Arts Intel Report

British Brass Chamber Music Day

April 25, 2026

The trumpet shall sound! And not just the trumpet. Two hour-long afternoon programs at Wigmore Hall showcase brass players in training at leading conservatories. The full-length evening concert presents the Onyx Brass, Connaught Brass, and London Central Brass, three of the U.K.’s finest exemplars of the brass quintet. All overlap in Timothy Jackson’s Three Worlds, a title taken from a M. C. Escher print that is most atypical. While iconic Eschers conjure up spatial impossibilities, Three Worlds shows nothing that could not be shot by a camera in the real world. So, what are we looking at? A landscape by a pond, defined by three bare trees (that’s one world). The water in the pond, home to one glowering, fleshy fishy specimen of kingly proportions (that’s another world). The surface of the pond, strewn with leaves that mirror the upper world but also serving as our window into the depths. Debussy and Ravel, eat your hearts out! Here’s Impressionism to the third power, as perhaps it existed—but silently—only in the mind of Claude Monet. —Matthew Gurewitsch