Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: You'll Want to Sing Along
Comment: The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble's "A Festival of Carols in Brass" (Adrew Kazdin's 1991 music transfer to CD from the 1967 Adam & Davies original) remains a classic for Christmas music lovers. I was delighted to recently find it at Amazon.
These "25 Favorite Christmas Carols" feature the most presented and memorial Yule time tunes, from "Deck the Halls" to "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". One hears "Good King Wenceslas", "Joy to the World", "O Holy Night", "Silent Night" and all the rest played with the announcement and bold delivery that only brass can bring. Trombones, baritones, French horns, bugles, coronets, trumpets- they are all here! You will want to sing along with all this brass.
Each piece is exquisite and comfortably tailored for Christmas activity. This CD makes excellent background holiday party music. It plays for a little over an hour. "A Festival of Carols in Brass" is recommended to everyone wishing to offer the musical joy of this holy season.
Merry Christmas!
Customer Rating: Summary: Fantastic CD with all the popular Christmas tunes
Comment: This is by far one of the best Christmas CD's. Like the other reviewers have said, "you feel as though a Salvation Army band is playing right outside your window". All the popular Christmas tunes are done with perfect precision and pitch. As a fellow (but amateur) musician, this CD makes me want to get out my old school band trumpet and play along.
It is truely amazing that the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble is just 5 guys - (2) trumpets, (1) french horn, (1) trombone, (1) tuba.
You can't go wrong with this classic CD. It's incredible - you have to hear it to believe it.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding Musicality
Comment: Several raters have complained about the lack of a listing of the performers on this disc. The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble was nothing more than the principal and second players of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Perhaps "nothing more" is not the best way to describe this as the performers were, at the time, some of the best players in the US. Gilbert Johnson (trumpet) was considered (until his death from cancer a few years ago) one of the finest trumpeters to ever have played in a symphony orchestra. When I was growing up, Henry Charles Smith (trombone) was the model we all looked up to for how a orchestral principal trombone should sound. He was the Joseph Alessi of the time. The same could be said for Mason Jones (french horn) and Abe Torchinsky (tuba). All of these players had students who are playing in major symphony orchestras around the world and continue to inspire future performers through their many recordings. To my knowlege, the performers are:
Gilbert Johnson (Trumpet)
Seymour Rosenfeld (Trumpet)
Mason Jones (French Horn)
Henry Charles Smith (Trombone)
Tyrone Breuninger (Trombone)
M. Dee Stewart (Euphonium)
Abe Torchinsky (Tuba)
Cheers!
