Rose City Brass Quintet

Exemplary  ·  Expansive  ·  Exhilarating

The Rose City Brass Quintet (RCBQ) is the Pacific Northwest’s premier, modern brass quintet, offering vibrantly virtuosic performances while pioneering expansive programming and business models that revitalize the concert music landscape. The group’s abundance of talent combined with a meticulous and exacting rehearsal style results in clear, cohesive, and powerful playing that’s both exhilarating and satisfying. Dedicated scholars and educators as well as performers, RCBQ members passionately revive and recontextualize musical gems within the historical brass quintet repertoire. The group balances this approach by regularly commissioning new music from an inclusive cross-section of leading composers to invigorate, diversify, and modernize the medium. Committed to sharing this new body of work, RCBQ created its own publishing company, which in addition to greater accessibility, provides future generations with an entrepreneurial example for how to build new infrastructure that strengthens our evolving musical ecosystem. 

The Rose City Brass Quintet features Logan Brown and Joe Klause on trumpets (built by Logan’s company, Thane Trumpets), Dan Partridge on horn, and Lars Campbell on trombone, all “kickass… local masters… anchored by tuba god JáTtik Clark… [who] manages to produce an unforgettable sound.” (Portland Mercury)  World-class chamber artists that also perform in the region’s top orchestras, teach at colleges and universities, and build instruments by hand, these five musicians unite in their love of the sweeping, majestic, all-encompassing sonic possibilities that exist within high-quality brass quintet literature. Their thoughtfully crafted programs often spotlight music of the Pacific Northwest contextualized within a dynamic, international mix of styles. Dedicated to inclusivity, the quintet focuses on the music of women, people of color, and other historically underrepresented composers. 

Recent and upcoming concerts include performances at The Old Church Concert Hall, Oregon Center for Contemporary Art, the Nordia House, Oregon Contemporary, and a series of outdoor concerts sponsored by grants from both Multnomah and Clackamas counties. Admired for their engaging, inspiring, and forward-thinking work with students, the ensemble has offered concerts and workshops in many academic settings, including Linfield University, Portland State University, Mount Hood Community College, and Oregon State University. Individually, members hold teaching positions at Portland State University, Lewis and Clark College, Reed College, University of Portland, Clark College, Clackamas Community College, and Mt. Hood Community College. Funded with a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), the quintet’s first album, Disquiet (2022), responds to the Covid-19 pandemic and the simultaneous national upwelling around racial injustice. Masterfully positioning four bold and surprising new works alongside never-before-recorded brass quintet literature, Disquiet is bound to become a modern classic.

Bio by Aligned Artistry