5 Questions: Kathy Brantigan, Denver Brass Co-Founder

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For 45 years, Denver Brass has been one of Colorado’s most distinctive musical voices. The boldly original ensemble is shaped by craftsmanship and a willingness to reinvent what brass performance can be. At the helm of that evolution is co-founder and Artistic Director Kathy Brantigan, a pioneering tubist whose vision has guided the ensemble from a strictly classical group to a genre-blending powerhouse known for its creative programming, large-scale collaborations and devoted audiences.

As Denver Brass marks its milestone anniversary, Brantigan reflects on how the ensemble sustains its legacy across generations, why their instrumentation inspires such inventive repertoire and how expanding into new musical traditions has strengthened their connection to Colorado’s communities. She also shares a glimpse of what lies ahead, including ambitious cross-disciplinary projects and a continued commitment to music as a force for unity and healing.

In this week’s 5 Questions, Brantigan delves into the artistic philosophy that has enabled Denver Brass to continually surprise and inspire audiences for nearly 50 years.

With the 45th Anniversary of Denver Brass this year, there must be long-time members of the program showcasing their skills daily. How are these members involved in supporting newcomers as you continue the program’s legacy? 

We’re fortunate to have musicians in our ensemble who have performed with us for a long time, some for over 30 years. New musicians are chosen by long-time musicians in each section of the ensemble—trumpets, horns, trombones, tubas and percussion—along with input from our conductor, Warren Deck and me, as the Artistic Director. These seasoned musicians share the organization’s philosophy, traditions, standards of excellence, and the all-important two golden rules—1) everything we do, we do to inspire our audiences, and 2) we are family; we love one another and make everything fun and joyful. If it’s not fun, we don’t do it!

The Denver Brass ensemble comprises a diverse range of members and skills. How do these members display their unique skills in each practice and performance? 

The music we perform is all written especially for us, as there are no other professional brass ensembles with our unique instrumentation—four trumpets, two horns, three trombones, two tubas, two percussionists and conductor. Composers and arrangers write to the strengths and personalities of our players. Everyone in the ensemble gets multiple solo phrases in almost every piece of music. Our audiences watch and listen keenly to see who is playing what, and they really enjoy observing how we interact with one another as we hand off musical phrases. This act of handing off phrases to one another is on a higher plane than verbal communication.

For all of us, it’s spiritual communication. To add to the color of our instrumentation, several of our players utilize more than one instrument during our performances. Each of our trumpet players keeps up to five instruments in front of them, all in different pitches, and all with different sounds. Our trombone players all double on euphonium, and our principal trombonist enjoys playing alto trombone as well as tenor trombone. Add to this a wide variety of mutes, and what you achieve is totally unexpected shades of sound coming from our thirteen musicians. 

In your mission statement, it says, “The Denver Brass is committed to reaching diverse and new audiences through creative programming.” How have you seen this type of outreach impact the community over the past 45 years? 

In the early years of The Denver Brass, we were exclusively a classical ensemble. We always brought variety and creativity into our classical programming, but within just two years, I concluded that both our musicians and our audiences needed more. If we were to reflect the culture of this great state of ours, then we owe it to everyone to expand our horizons and explore the music of the many cultures that make up both our local and statewide communities. 

It was exhilarating to venture into Latin, jazz, pop, Broadway and new music composed expressly for our ensemble. Soon we started to create strongly themed season series concerts, with descriptive titles that immediately engaged and piqued the curiosity of those who heard or saw our ads. Themes like “How Much Bach can you Handel?,””Echoes of the Emerald Isles,” “Twas the Brass Before Christmas” and “Of Castle and Cathedrals,” brought in larger and larger crowds, and we knew that we were onto something very important. 

It wasn’t long after these successes that we started adding occasional costuming, interesting staging, and multimedia enhancements to our “shows.” We call them shows now, as they are much more than just a concert.

Music is a broad compass filled with many different sounds and styles. Does Denver Brass ever partner with other musical groups in the Denver area to reach other audiences? 

We love to partner with other groups, not just to reach new audiences, but also to expand the boundaries of musical expression. When we first decided to present a concert with bagpipes, we were astounded to discover that the combination of brass and bagpipes was much more than just the sum of brass + bagpipes. It was an entirely new sound that was like none other. Our brass and bagpipe shows have grown to now be our biggest shows of the season, and they now include Scottish and Irish dancers, often a vocalist, and occasionally other guest artists. 

We also partner with a number of soloists, choirs, other ethnic dance groups, steel drums and any artists with whom we think we can create a stunning new musical sound or expression. Recently, we’ve enjoyed inventing new fusions of music, reimagining classical pieces in a newer style of music or fusing two entirely different types of music into one new sound. 

Our “Merengue Mallow” takes the traditional Irish “Rakes of Mallow” and places it in a wonderful setting. Another favorite is “Carmina Carnavalana,” where main themes from Carmina Burana are presented in a second-line Mardi Gras style. Both of those pieces were written by our percussionist, Kaitlin McCarthy. My personal favorite is our combination of Bach’s “Sleepers Awake” with “Whiter Shade of Pale,” by our bass trombonist, Andy Wolfe.

What is next for Denver Brass in the coming years, and what does it hope to achieve within the community? 

The Denver Brass is on a path to continue to expand the boundaries of expected musical expression, bringing together diverse audiences in celebration of a new kind of melting pot of musical expression, providing hope and inspiration. I really believe that music can, and should, showcase the best of mankind and be used as a tool to heal and inspire. 

We will be building on the recent success of one of our composer’s new pieces, “Sketches of Courage.” Our trumpeter, Sean Schafer Hennessy, wrote this based on the World War II battlefield sketches drawn by his grandfather. This piece, complete with visuals and narration, takes one through landing at Normandy, freeing concentration camps, grappling with PTSD (which had no name at that time), and culminates with love and understanding of family and a world at peace. “Sketches of Courage” has been so well received that we are now working toward a documentary film that we believe could earn an Emmy Award.