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Austrian Alps
Amarillo Concert Boy Choir at the Globe New Center
Permian Band
Randall Band
Double reed fun
WT Buffalo Band
Commissioned by Band Directors Talk Shop in honor of devoted band director Marcia Zoffuto. Premiered by a virtual West Texas A&M University collaboration in 2020.
Download the score & parts for FREE through 2021 to perform with your own band at banddirectorstalkshop.com/persist.
Check it out!
PERSIST (a work commissioned in honor of band director Marcia Zoffuto) - Band Directors Talk Shop
banddirectorstalkshop.com
PERSIST WAS COMMISSIONED FOR ALL. This is the second work commissioned by Band Directors Talk Shop and our hope is that: the work will be PERFORMED. Marci Zoffuto will be remembered and celebrated. ba...Congratulations to both Panhandle and Forsan high school bands on their advancement to state in San Antonio in December! Also, congrats to Wheeler on their first finalist ranking!
I have recently been informed that my composition “Legacy Fanfare” has been selected, along with 8 other worthy selections in the Dallas Winds 2020-21 Fanfare Competition.
Also, congratulations to Randy Stagich, a recent graduate from my studio in his selection as well!
More information on the upcoming release on YouTube and social media will follow.
Legacy Fanfare by B.J. Brooks
Awake! by Kyle E. Henkel
Fanfare for the New Son by Aaron Houston
To Usher in a New Era by Shawn Gurk
Silver Fanfare by JaRod Hall
So We Meet Again by Andrew E. Lawson
Proudly We Hailed by Dustin J. Goes
From the Ashes by Randy Stagich
I Saw Three Ships—A Christmas Fanfare, by John K. Evans.
Don't miss your shot to be in the virtual premiere of "Persist", a Band Director’s Talk Shop commission in honor of Marcia Zoffuto.
To be included in the premiere follow the simple instructions here: www.bj-brooks.com
Band Director’s Talk Shop has commissioned West Texas A&M University’s Dr. BJ Brooks to write a grade-2 piece in honor of Marcia Zoffuto. Zoffuto was a West Texas State University graduate and an exemplary band director in several schools. Her Bandmaster Hall of Fame entry can be read below.
This is a virtual band project that needs your performance to be great! To be included in the premiere, visit Dr. Brooks’ website and follow the simple instructions. www.bj-brooks.com
We will be collecting videos throughout August, but to be early is to be on time. Thank you for your help in making this group effort a successful musical endeavor!
Bb
Here is the video from the 2018 Blue Knights Alumni Corps performance that features my arrangements for the event! If you look closely you might spot me somewhere in there.
2018 Blue Knights Alumni Corps
youtu.be
DENVER, CO - For the first time in the organization's history, the Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps Alumni performed together for their 60th Anniversary celeb...Link to the Music
Symphony No. 3 Gödel, Escher, Bach
issuu.com
Symphony #3: Gödel, Escher, Bach is a meditation on human cognition. It was written in the spirit of Douglas Hofstadter’s seminal book of the same name that details, abstracts, and illuminates the ...I’m getting faster at this. Not quite as fast as my video shows, however.
The WTAMU Symphonic Band leaves in one week for a performance tour leading up to their 15th appearance at the Texas Music Educators Association Conference!
Come see the premiere of my 3rd Symphony by the wonderful WTAMU Symphonic Band in Canyon, Odessa, Floresville, San Antonio, or TMEA!The WTAMU Symphonic Band will be embarking on tour February 9 - 13 for performances in Canyon, Odessa, San Antonio, and Floresville, culminating in the ensemble's 15th performance at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention!
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The program consists of music by Mikhail Glinka, Walter Piston, Jimmy Dorsey, David Maslanka, Giacomo Puccini, and BJ Brooks and will feature saxophonist James Barger.
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We look forward to seeing many of our friends, family, and alumni at these concerts!
The WTAMU Symphonic Band will be embarking on tour February 9 - 13 for performances in Canyon, Odessa, San Antonio, and Floresville, culminating in the ensemble's 15th performance at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention!
•
The program consists of music by Mikhail Glinka, Walter Piston, Jimmy Dorsey, David Maslanka, Giacomo Puccini, and BJ Brooks and will feature saxophonist James Barger.
•
We look forward to seeing many of our friends, family, and alumni at these concerts!
The WTAMU Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Dr. Mark Bartley, is showcased in this high plains extravaganza featuring the music of Dr. BJ Brooks. On life's journey, we find True North when we join in something larger than ourselves... the Pathway to Polaris.
Movement 3- Bach
Concept:
Book I of J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), BWV 846–893, and the first prelude (p1) in particular serves as the foundation of the third movement. Harmonies from p1 and melodies from throughout WTC are quoted throughout the movement.
Process:
The collection of notes in each measure of p1 are used in order throughout the duration of the movement. This slow harmonic development is juxtaposed with alterations of the consistent rhythmic texture from p1 realized as an energetic bass line, and as the first melodic motive. As the harmony emerges, other melodic motives from WTC are layered throughout. After the harmonic process completes, the end of the piece concludes with a measure by measure restatement of p1. The order of the melodic motives is derived by serializing p1’s introduction of all twelve chromatic pitch classes (C, E, G, D, A, F, B, F-sharp, B-flat, C-sharp, G-sharp, E-flat). The movement uses 48 melodic quotes in serial order from WTC. The order from WTC is therefore Prelude 1 in C-major, Fugue 1 in C-major, Prelude 2 in C-minor, Fugue 2 in C-minor, Prelude 9 in E-major, Fugue 9 in E-major, Prelude 10 in E-minor, Fugue 10 in E-minor, etc.
Movement 2- Escher
Concept: The M.C. Escher lithograph “Drawing Hands”.
Process: “Drawing Hands” serves as a visual metaphor for the structure of Movement 2- Escher. The right hand reaches left bringing references from movement 3 to the beginning of the work as the left hand reaches right and brings references from movement 1, though apparently inverted.
Preamble
Symphony #3: Gödel, Escher, Bach is a meditation on human cognition. It was written in the spirit of Douglas Hofstadter’s seminal book of the same name that details, abstracts, and illuminates the mystery of cognition.
In 1979 Dr. Douglas Hofstadter, Indiana University Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature, published his Pulitzer Prize winning Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, know colloquially as G.E.B. The incompleteness theorems of Kurt Gödel, proven with an ingenious use of recursion and self-reference, are illuminated by analogy in prose, the art of M.C. Escher, and in the music of J.S. Bach.
At the beginning of the 20th century the world of mathematics was in crisis. The 19th century had seen an increasing momentum towards mathematical abstraction. Mathematician’s formalization of foundational logical structures were constantly undermined by paradoxes within their constructed rigorous systems. An attempt to avoid the paradoxes and to streamline the logical process through the use of a relatively small number of symbols was written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910. The Principia Mathematica used a specialized grammar that avoided certain paradoxes. It is a work of such logical complexity that it takes the book 362 pages to suggest ⊢:.⍺,𝛽∊1.⊃:⍺∩𝛽=ʌ.≡.⍺∪𝛽∊2 after which the authors note, “From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2.”
The consistency and completeness of Principia Mathematica were all but settled until Logician Kurt Gödel published his incompleteness theorems in 1931. The theorems cleverly use a type of recursion and self reference in metamathematical logic to demonstrate that Principia Mathematica can indeed contain paradoxes. Thus Gödel proved that 1) for any substantive formal system there are unprovable truths, and 2) a system cannot on its own demonstrate its own consistency. Sufficiently complex formalized systems such as mathematics may either be consistent or complete, but not both.
Programme
Movement 1- Gödel
Concept:
The exquisiteness, complexity, and logical journey of Gödel’s proof is represented throughout movement 1. A chaconne of 6 chords starting with the outline of E-minor, arpeggiated as the pitches G, E, and B in the high winds, begins a series of twenty continuous variations. Self reference, recursion, and sonification are used throughout the movement.
Process:
Self reference appears in numerous ways including the arpeggiated GEB, groupings of notes on staves clustered to appear as the letters “GEB” on the score, harmony created by the untransposed pitches GEB played in unison, serialized melodies using the first movement’s introduction of all twelve chromatic pitches (G, E, B, E-flat, B-flat, D, A, F-sharp, C-sharp, F, C, A-flat), sonification (of a type similar to Gödel’s arithmetization) of the logical expression in Principia Mathematica that yields 1+1=2, aural and visual representations of Zeno’s paradox, and the use of the chaconne form itself as it insistently reuses the same 6 chords throughout.
From the premiere, Movement II.
Symphony No.3: Gödel, Escher, Bach. II Escher
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Symphony 3, G.E.B. is meant to be heard with the following programme information in mind. BJ Brooks - Symphony #3 - G.E.B. Preamble Symphony #3: Gödel, Esche...From the premiere. Mvt. 1.
Symphony No.1: Gödel, Escher, Bach. I Gödel
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Symphony No.1: Gödel, Escher, Bach. is meant to be heard with the following programme information in mind. Preamble Symphony #3: Gödel, Escher, Bach is a med...As we get closer to you UIL, good luck and and congratulations to the following marching bands that I have written for this year:
Burkburnett HS
Caprock HS
Dumas HS
Memphis HS
Midland HS
Pampa HS
Permian HS
Portales HS
Randall HS
Tascosa HS
Thurgood Marshal
Vega HS
West Texas HS
Wheeler HS
Congratulations Permian High School on your premiere of “We Choose to Go to the Moon” at the Music for All National Festival in Indianapolis!!!
Things are still great in Region 7! I just returned from Stephenville directing the Region 7 ATSSB HS Symphonic Band. The musicians well executed a challenging program and great memories were made! Thank you to the great organizers Brian Beeson, Michael Copeland, and Teresa Archambo for putting the right things in the right places at the right time for a terrific concert.
