
The Bloor-Annex Brass Ensemble will perform a concert title Asturias on February 11. It’s the third annual performance for the student-led ensemble, and it takes place at the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church as part of the Musical Mosaic series.
The Ensemble is made up largely of students and alumni of the University of Toronto Faculty of Music and the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music, led by Artistic Director and co-founder Ilan Mendel.
The program features a variety of works from Sibelius to Albeniz and Bjork, and includes a performance of Florence Price’s Octet for Brasses and Piano with pianist Adella Li.
The Music
The program includes works from the standard repertoire for brass, and new pieces arranged for brass, and spans centuries from the Renaissance to the 20th century. The ensemble will perform music by Gabrielli, Whitacre, Bjork and Sibelius.
The piece that inspired the title of the concert, Asturias, (also knows as Leyenda), by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz was arranged for brass ensemble by Steven Verhelst for Brass of the Royal Concertgbouw Orchestra in the Netherlands.
Florence Price: Octet for Brasses and Piano
Price wrote the piece in 1930, but it remained unperformed, and literally gathering dust, for decades before its recent rediscovery.
Florence Beatrice Price was a pianist, organist, music teach and composer. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was subsequently active in her career in Chicago from about 1927 right up until her death in 1953. She was the first African-American whose composition was performed by a major orchestra, the Chicago Symphony.
She composed more than 300 works, including four symphonies, choral works and art songs, four concertos, chamber music, and pieces for solo instruments. Some of that body of work, however, was lost to time. Without support, her pieces languished for decades.
But, that changed quite recently.
In 2009, an Illinois couple were set to renovate an old and abandoned property they’d purchased just outside St. Anne, a small town. The property was in very poor condition; there was a hole in the roof where a tree had fallen inside, and the house had been vandalized.
Luckily, however, a portion of the structure remained intact, and most importantly, dry. That’s where the couple discovered a trove of handwritten music manuscripts and other documents.
On researching the property, they discovered it had once belonged to Florence Price as a summer home — and her name appears on the manuscripts. They contacted the librarians at the University of Arkansas, and the process of rediscovery began in earnest. Along with the Octet, the cache of works contained her fourth symphony, and two violin concertos.

Bloor-Annex Brass Ensemble: Conductor Ilan Mendel
Trombonist and conductor Ilan Mendel is a conductor and trombonist is a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He currently makes Toronto his home.
Ilan is the Assistant Conductor of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra (TSYO), and the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Bloor-Annex Brass Ensemble. A former member of the TSYO, he conducted the ensemble in Shostakovich’s ‘Festive Overture’ at their ‘Titan’ 50th Anniversary concert in Roy Thomson Hall, which he repeated in Cleveland, OH at the Blossom Music Center.
His experience as a conductor includes co-founding and leading the Toronto Chamber Symphony, a student-led orchestra, as its Managing Artistic Director, as well as conducting the University of Toronto Contemporary Music Ensemble, University of Toronto Trombone Choir, and other ensembles.
As a trombonist, he as performed with the Ontario Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Conservatory Orchestra at the Glenn Gould School, the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, and others, and participated in the Brott Music Festival (National Academy Orchestra of Canada), the Berlin Opera Academy, Domaine Forget and MusicFest Canada.
After earning a Bachelor of Music in Trombone Performance from the University of Toronto, Ilan is currently enrolled in the Artist Diploma Program at the Glenn Gould School.

Pianist Adella Li
Adella Li is a native of Australia, currently studying music a the Glenn Gould School.
Adella is an experienced soloist and collaborative pianist, and has been performing across North America, Europe, and Australia for a decade. She made her national debut as a soloist in Australia in 2022, performing Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto with Penrith Symphony Orchestra, led by Dr Paul Terracini. As a chamber musician, she recently created a string quintet arrangement to accompany a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G at a performance in Mazzoleni Hall.
She is in her third year of study at the Glenn Gould School as a full scholarship student.
- Admission to the concert is by donation, with a livestream link available. More details and information about the February 11 concert at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church [HERE].
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