Virginia Arts Festival Presents TENTHING BRASS ENSEMBLE

It takes a lot of brass to consider the whole of the classical repertoire your playground-especially if you're a trumpet player. Violinists, cellists, pianists can take their pick of masterpieces showcasing their instruments, but for trumpeters, the pickings are decidedly slimmer. Not a problem for Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, whose adventurous transcriptions delight audiences, particularly in performance by Helseth's brass ensemble tenThing. Listeners rediscover works originally scored for other instruments, hearing them anew in the liquid gold sound of trumpets, trombones, French horn, tuba (and sometimes a flugelhorn). Add to that the fact that this particular brass band is all female and incorporates sometimes stately, sometimes funny choreography into their striking performances, and you have a phenomenon unseen by audiences until now.

The ensemble was started as a lark by a group of female friends, all brass players, and quickly became a passion. Each of the individual performers in tenThing have busy music careers, so performances by the ensemble are rare, and fans gleefully scoop up tickets. It was tenThing's performance at the 2013 BBC Proms-the annual summer classical concert blowout that is a cornerstone of the London arts scene-that drove their worldwide fame. The various YouTube recordings of the ensemble's Proms performance have been viewed well over a million times.

"tenThing completely reinvents the idea of a brass band," explained one reviewer about the Proms performance. "It's not quite a chamber ensemble or a brass band, and it's certainly not an orchestra, yet tenThing seems to be able to morph effortlessly into each of these these like a benevolent Jekyll/Hyde, whilst its approach is musically appealing and entirely refreshing. tenThing's enthusiasm for its art is infectious...and that makes the ensemble worth watching. Great music, great players, and great fun to boot" (bachtrack.com).

At a tenThing concert you might hear bits of Bizet's Carmen, or Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera Suite, alongside sizzling tangos by Astor Piazzolla and picturesque classics from the ensemble's fellow Norwegian, Edvard Grieg. You never know what you might hear-and the surprise is half the fun in this unique group's perforrmances, "a joyful blast from start to finish" (The Independent, United Kingdom).

Tickets for the Virginia Arts Festival presentation of tenThing are $20-$35 for adults, $10 for students under 25 and can be purchased online at www.vafest.org, by phone at 757-282-2822 or by visiting the Virginia Arts Festival box office located at 440 Bank Street in Norfolk Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

About the Virginia Arts Festival

Since 1997, the Virginia Arts Festival has transformed the cultural scene in southeastern Virginia, presenting great performers from around the world to local audiences and making this historic, recreation-rich region a cultural destination for visitors from across the United States and around the world. The Festival has presented numerous U.S. and regional premieres, and regularly commissions new works of music, dance, and theater from some of today's most influential composers, choreographers and playwrights. The Festival's arts education programs reach tens of thousands of area schoolchildren each year through student matinees, in-school performances, artists' residencies, master classes and demonstrations.