A brass quintet is a five-piece musical ensemble composed of brass instruments. The most common instrumentation is two trumpets or cornets, one French horn, one trombone or euphonium\baritone, and one tuba or bass trombone.  As an ensemble type, the brass quintet is very flexible, with a repertoire encompassing musical genres from madrigals to jazz and everything in between. The instrumentation for a brass quintet is very flexible. 

 

The contemporary brass quintet was started in the late 1940s by two different groups operating independently -- the Chicago Brass Quintet and the New York Brass Quintet. Two members of the Chicago Brass Quintet can arguably be credited with helping plant the seed for today's success of the brass quintet medium.  The Canadian Brass has gone on to establish both the style and popularity of the quintet medium throughout the world having performed more than five thousand concerts and having sold more than 500,000 quintet music books for performers around the world, affirming the rise of the brass quintet as a world-wide phenomenon.