ONYX BRASS

Blog Archives

Terrific sound and playing.

Guy Rickards, Gramophone Magazine on Onyx Noir

A superb disc by Onyx Brass.

Guy Rickards, Gramophone Magazine on Fanfares

Onyx Brass, well, the sound, just listen!

Andrew McGregor, CD Review, BBC Radio 3

An awesome majesty of sound.

The Telegraph on our Recording of Parry Choral works with the Choir of Westminster Abbey

One of the most engaging concerts I have attended in some time. Their obvious enthusiasm for the repertoire was infectious. I’ve never heard contemporary music sound so accessible. The audience loved it. 

Tom Lewis, EMI Classics

With its scrupulous attention to balance, timbre and nuance of phrasing, it is reminiscent of the Philip Jones quintet in its prime, where total integration of five musical personalities becomes an ensemble that is much more than the sum of its parts….five stars. 

BBC Music Magazine

Onyx Brass come alive as responsive individuals most readily in the Shostakovich. The G major fugue is supremely virtuoso, the E minor resplendent and dramatic, the D major questing and deft.  And then comes the urgency of the G sharp minor, the multi-layered A flat and the orchestrally-inspired struggle of the D minor (marked resonancesof the Fifth Symphony in its new guise) – all delivered with a liberated and characterful imagination…The real achievement, however, is the Shostakovich, already downloaded on my iPod as some of the most thrilling chamber brass-playing of its kind. 

Gramophone on Fugue, Sept 2008