Most likely, you often heard such words as “Dixieland” or “Brass Quintet” and didn’t really think about their meaning. These words denote the types of different jazz ensembles. Some try to classify them by such "overseas" names, and we will try to just explain what's what.
What is a brass quintet?
Brass Quintet is a collective that is the basis of all the foundations in the jazz business. The word "breaststroke" is translated into Russian as "copper." "Quintet" is formed from the "fifth" - "five." It turns out that the brass quintet is a group of performers on five brass instruments.
The most popular composition: trumpet, French horn (at worst, alto), baritone, trombone and tuba (or bass-baritone). For such an ensemble, a huge number of all sorts of transcriptions have been written, in fact, this is a small orchestra, where the horn plays the role of a snare drum, and the tuba plays the role of a big one.
So, the repertoire of the brass quintet can be very diverse: I personally heard the performance of such a composition by the performance of the well-known Habanera from the opera "Carmen", I mean the popular classics. But, by the way, this so-called garden repertoire will also be fun to play with this composition: waltzes, romances. The performance of pop and pop-jazz works is not excluded.
What is the composition - Dixieland?
If we add a banjo and a double bass to the brass quintet (the clarinet would fit in well here), then a completely different team will turn out - Dixieland. "Dixieland" literally translates as "Dixie's country" (and Dixie is the southern region of the American continent, which at one time was chosen by white people).
The historical fact: the Dixiendas are often “handed over” to the wrong jazz repertoire, which is based on the traditions of Negro folklore, but European works that are distinguished by their soft sound, smoothness and melody. This is due to the fact that the Dixieland played "white" jazz and did not take black jazzmen into their teams. The composition is focused on the performance of light, mobile pop and jazz pop music.
What can be called a big band?
If you add a large rhythmic section (drums and keyboard-string) to Dixieland, enter the woodwind section (if this was not done in the original composition of Dixieland), and also increase the number of musicians playing related instruments in order to get a polyphonic sound and weave then you get a real big band. From English "big band" translates as "big group".
In fact, the composition is not quite large (up to twenty people), but it is already considered to be a complete jazz band, ready to perform the most diverse repertoire - starting from marches and ending with such popular compositions as James Brown’s “IfeelGood” or “WhataWonderfulWorld” Louis Armstrong.
So, you, dear readers, were presented the main types of jazz ensembles. After such a total enlightenment in this little “confusion”, it is permissible to relax a little. We have good music for you:
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