In our most recent recital, District5 performed works by Mozart, Villa-Lobos, and Carter. These pieces were not only transformative in nature, but also served to transform the members of District5 themselves into different configurations. (And that is just a fancy way of saying: we were down a horn player due to some ill-timed wisdom tooth surgery and needed to figure out what music--that is still wonderful and challenging and meaningful--to program!) We ended up with an extr

As we put together our latest program, EXILED, we came across many incredible thoughts on the subject of exile and feel we only began to scratch the surface. We picked just a few thoughts to be recorded (by our good friend, Yong!) and played in between works on the program. Here are those quotes plus some more favorites that didn't make it into the show: "A composer cannot view the world in which he lives with indifference. Human suffering, oppression, injustice... all that c

We had so much fun putting Brahms piano quartet no. 1 together this Spring. Moving from Birtwistle and Stockhausen straight into Brahms, definitely had us putting on our Romantic hats. Along with renowned pianist and member of the UMD faculty Mayron Tsong, District5 gave the world premiere of Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 1 Op. 25, transcribed for wind quintet and piano by David Plylar in April 2014. His transcription made us feel that Brahms had intended the work for wind quinte