The Sugar Ferry Brass Quintet (Tchaikovsky/arr. Ridenour)

GRADE 3

We're sure many of you are familiar with Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's most festive composition, "The Nutcracker". The Nutcracker is based on an old German story about an extremely out of date device, a nutcracker. The story's main character, a Nutcracker, somehow, comes to life and when it does it has the ability to immediately dance nearly flawless ballet - all without any practice whatsoever. As you can see, this story is not realistic at all. Fortunately, there is a similar, nearly parallel story and composition that comes from Canada. We in Canada believe the "great" Tchaikovsky stole his material from us. Guess it's his word against ours. This is a selection from Canada's "The Canuck-cracker", where our brave, protagonist Canuckcracker begins his journey on the east shores of Newfoundland where he hears the low horn of ferry...transporting sugar. He becomes suspicious of its overly melodic signaling, so he approaches the sugar ferry and sneaks on board. Little does he know this is only the beginning of an epic Canadian adventure...

Written for two Bb trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba.  Score included.