Americus Brass Band
Biography
The Americus Brass Band is one of America’s best-known professional brass ensembles, recognized for authentic performance of 19th and early 20th Century brass music on authentic period instruments. Founded 50 years ago, this Southern California ensemble has toured nationally performing hundreds of shows in over 35 states and recorded four critically acclaimed recordings. In addition to this Summit recording, “Music of the Civil War,” their “Buffalo Bill Wild West Show Cowboy Band” recording was named a “Best of the Year” and “a must buy” by Randy Salas in Fanfare Magazine.
The Americus Brass Band has also been invited to perform at many national events including the 125th anniversary reenactments of the Civil War battles of Bull Run and Gettysburg, the International Brassfest II, The 2016 International Trumpet Guild conference, the Great American Brass Band Festival, and the National Civil War Band Festival. The group has also performed at the Hollywood Bowl, the first band to perform in that venue for over 60 years. John Henken of the Los Angeles Times described the performance as “blazing” and “taut” and wrote, “Its 13 members…handled their assignments with virtuoso flair….”
The Americus Brass Band is probably best known for its work in Hollywood where it has recorded sound-track music for and/or appeared on-screen in well over a dozen major motion pictures and television shows including Glory, Gettysburg, Geronimo: An American Legend, and Hidalgo.
More recently, the Americus Brass Band developed a new touring show, “Top Brass” that expands its repertoire to include musical reenactments of four iconic American military bands: Patrick Gilmore’s 24th Massachusetts Infantry Band from the Civil War, John Phillip Sousa’s United States Marine Band, James Reese Europe’s 369th “Harlem Hell Fighters” Infantry Band” from WWI, and Glenn Miller’s famous Army Air Force Band of WWII.
Finally, in 2019, on the 100th anniversary of the revolutionary Pathe recordings by James Reese Europe’s “Harlem Hell Fighters’ Band,” the ABB has recorded authentic musical re-creations of many of the most iconic performances of this earliest of jazz “big bands.” These shows and recordings demonstrate once again, why the Americus Brass Band is, and will forever be, America’s Brass Band!
