Wayne Alpern : Varieties & Extravaganzas Review

by Steven Miller

Wayne Alpern’s Varieties & Extravaganzas is a traditional contemporary classical release that plays like a mapped journey through musical style. The program moves through original compositions and inventive arrangements for brass quintet, traveling from Handel and Bartók to Broadway, swing, and third stream hybrids without ever feeling random. Alpern describes the project as a “musical matinee,” and that framing fits: each piece opens a different musical setting while the Times Square Brass Quintet acts as the connective thread tying the entire program together.

What makes the program flow is the range of references and how naturally those references are composed. The ensemble doesn’t flatten jazz into classical chamber music, nor does it treat historical forms as distant artifacts. Each track commits to its own language.

The opening “Allegretto” starts the album’s relationship with the past. Based on Handel’s Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 1, the piece behaves like a like a recomposition with subtle contemporary color. The Baroque framework is still there, though Alpern trims the texture down considerably, adding motion articulation and subtly modernizing the rhythmic character. The music feels energized rather than preserved.

That energy shifts in “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.” The muted trumpet color, stride-influenced rhythmic motion, and relaxed phrasing place the listener firmly inside a swing-era atmosphere. What’s striking is how effectively the brass quintet adapts the mechanics of jazz arranging without relying on a traditional rhythm section. The tuba functions like a walking bass, inner voices keep the harmony moving, and the brass lines alternate between ensemble writing and written improvisatory gestures. There’s enough detail in the articulation and pacing that the style feels lived-in rather than reconstructed. What kept pulling me back, though, was the muted trumpet writing near the beginning and end of the arrangement, it frames the entire piece.

When the album moves into “Chorale,” the mood changes again. The writing becomes broader and more reflective, drawing on the intervals associated with composers like Bartók, Holst, and Barber. The ensemble sound rounds out noticeably, especially in the lower brass writing. Even when the harmony stretches toward tension, the pacing remains patient and grounded, giving the piece an introspective quality that contrasts sharply with the rhythmic movement surrounding it.

The album transforms with “Have You Met Miss Jones?” The arrangement leans fully into Broadway and big band vocabulary reflected in the ensemble voicings, swing-based momentum, and a shout chorus section that gives the brass writing the role usually occupied by a 19-peiece big band. Alpern’s references to West Coast jazz arranging traditions make sense here; the structure of the arrangement matters as much as the swing feel itself. Even without saxophones, piano, or drums, the quintet captures the shape and attitude of the idiom remarkably well.

The album gets even more interesting when it reaches “Nutcracker.” Rather than simply “jazzing up” Tchaikovsky, Alpern uses the familiar material as a testing ground for stylistic overlap. Swing gestures, contrapuntal layering, and hints of third stream writing all begin interacting at once. The result sits somewhere between classical adaptation and jazz reinterpretation without fully belonging to either category. Even the final glissando feels intentionally theatrical, like the arrangement briefly winking at its own experiment.

“Parade” changes the atmosphere again. Where some earlier tracks emphasize stylistic complexity, this piece thrives on clarity, wit, and lightness. The writing leans into Mozartian playfulness and Haydn-like wit, and the brass textures remain stylized even as the rhythmic material gradually evolves. At first the piece sounds deceptively simple, but subtle harmonic tensions and repeating rhythmic figures slowly begin reshaping the tension and release,. The music never loses its sense of charm.

As the program unfolds, what becomes impressive is the range of references and how confidently the ensemble moves between them. A swing passage never feels dressed up as classical writing, and the more formal material never loses its own identity trying to sound contemporary. Alpern allows each musical environment to retain its own character. The continuity comes instead from the ensemble itself: the consistent brass timbre, the balance between voices, and the group’s ability to adjust articulation, phrasing, and attack from one idiom to another without losing cohesion.

The Times Square Brass Quintet deserves credit for making that flexibility believable. Their playing is technically polished throughout, but more importantly, they understand the behavioral differences each style demands. Swing passages breathe differently than chorales. Broadway-inflected material requires a different kind of accent and momentum than neo-Baroque writing. The ensemble consistently makes those adjustments feel natural rather than calculated.

Varieties & Extravaganzas is a sequence of changing musical settings connected by the same music mind of Wayne Alpern. One style opens into another, the transitions feel natural. The brass quintet remains the constant presence moving through the reimagining of it all.