Top Brass: A Denver ensemble is leaving a major legacy

The globally-recognized Denver Brass is an elite ensemble, and one of the premier musical organizations of its kind. Its 14 world-class musicians, playing more than 13 distinct brass instruments plus percussion, craft a unique sound all their own. The numbers speak for themselves: Since its inception in 1981, Denver Brass has produced 32 recordings, and reaches more that 30,000 listeners annually, through more than 140 concerts and outreach programs. So it makes sense that Denver Brass received the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2008.

But when it all began 45 years ago, it was really just two band kids who wanted to play music together.

The Denver Brass was founded by Kathy (then Alysworth) and Chuck Brantigan, both tuba players. Chuck had a bunch of music at his disposal, and Kathy knew a good many professional brass players. The chamber ensemble they developed didn’t look like its forerunners. Even then, the group was breaking new ground. The difference, from the start, was that this ensemble would be built with two tubas as a foundation. It wouldn’t be the last time the Denver Brass would pioneer new territories of genre-defying music.

The Denver Brass has created two legacy recording projects, and is in the midst of a third, including an album of original commissions called “Top of the World” and a new holiday album called “If You Just Believe.” The band also recorded “Sketches of Courage,” a symphonic poem created by Denver-based composer Sean Schafer Hennessy and produced by the 2026 Grammy Award-winner Elaine Martone. To support and publicize these projects, the Denver Brass is hosting at a free release party on July 21 at the Newman Center for Performing Arts.

“In its early years, The Denver Brass was exclusively a classical ensemble,” says Denver Brass executive director Becky Wilkins. “We always brought variety and creativity into our classical programming, but within two years, Kathy concluded that both our musicians and our audiences needed more. If we were to reflect the culture of this great state of ours, then we owed it to everyone to expand our horizons and explore the music of the many cultures that make up both our local and statewide communities. We ventured into adding Latin, jazz, pop, Broadway, and new music composed expressly for our ensemble.”

And the group indulged in a little cheekiness too. “Soon we started to create strongly themed season series concerts,” says Wilkins, “with descriptive titles that immediately engaged audiences and piqued their curiosity. Themes like ‘How Much Bach can you Handel?,’ ‘Echoes of the Emerald Isles,’ ”Twas the Brass Before Christmas,’ and ‘Of Castle and Cathedrals'”‘ brought in increasingly larger crowds. We knew that we were on to something important. It wasn’t long after that we started adding occasional costuming, interesting staging, and multi-media enhancements to our ‘shows.’ We call them shows now because they are much more than just concerts.”

Wilkins says that it was only in planning the 2026 season that they realized the group hadn’t done a major recording in some time, the last one debuting in February 2020, right before the world shut down for COVID. “We released that album in October 2020,” she recalls, “but nobody was thinking about music that way, so it had a really silent entry into the world.”

The group decided to record its concerts in November of 2025, and the holiday concert that followed. “People have been asking for a new holiday album for a long time,” Wilkins says, “and our last one was in 2012.

The new albums, two of which will be available for purchase not only at the July 21 concert but also available online after the event, are each notable in their own way. “Top of the World” is an album of original commissioned works produced by University of Denver professor and recording engineer Michael Schulze. “The pieces were written exclusively for The Denver Brass,”says Wilkins, “and several of the composers on this album are musicians in the ensemble as well. The whole album has this wonderful Colorado feeling of wide open spaces and breathtaking summits.”

“If You Just Believe” is the new holiday album produced by Jeff Valentine, a recording engineer and senior master sergeant with the U.S. Air Force Academy Band. “Fans have been asking for a new holiday album for years,” explains Wilkins, “and we’ve been collaborating with Steven Taylor and Aubrey Jacobs at Christmas for many years—it was high time we did an album with these cherished collaborators. In addition to hearing a lot of holiday favorites, the album features a lot of carols with our signature Denver Brass twist, as well as two original works. One is a new original work for Hanukkah, composed by our trumpeter Sean Schafer Hennessy.”

The Denver Brass’ third new album is more than a collection of pieces, according to Wilkins. “It’s a statement of who we are,” she says. “An American brass ensemble rooted in storytelling, shaped by 45 years of innovation, and committed to pushing our art form forward. At its core is Sketches of Courage by Sean Schafer Hennessy—a work that captures the human cost, sacrifice, and resilience woven into our shared history. The piece was inspired by a sketchbook created by his grandfather, Francis Xavier Hennessy II, a WWII forward observer who saw combat from Normandy to Mortain. He witnessed trauma few of us can imagine. But he didn’t speak of it. Instead, he sketched. Sean transformed those ink-lined memories into sound.” The July 21 performance is, in part, a fundraiser for this third album.

“Classical orchestral music is all around us, from commercials to video games, phone hold music, sleep playlists, as well as film and TV soundtracks,” says Watkins. “It’s one of the most powerful emotive mechanisms that humanity has to experience. Classical music can guide a person on an emotional and oftentimes spiritual journey. Try watching your favorite movie on mute and see how empty the experience is without the music. There’s a lot that classical music can convey that can be universally understood. Everyone can understand a triumphant trumpet fanfare for celebration, a mournful melody for melancholy, or fast driving rhythms for action or suspense. Music transcends language.”

The Denver Brass will perform a free show at the Newman Center (2344 E. Iliff Ave.) at 7:30 on Tuesday, July 21. New albums can be purchased at the show or online at www.denverbrass.org, and will be available for streaming on major platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. Donations can also be made on the Denver Brass website.