Brass band in the context of "Crown Imperial (march)"

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, and dance music. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.

As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.

A Christmas carol is a carol (a song or hymn) on the theme of Christmas, traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas and holiday season. The term noel has sometimes been used, especially for carols of French origin. Christmas carols may be regarded as a subset of the broader category of Christmas music.

A horn section is a group of musicians playing horns. In an orchestra or concert band, it refers to the musicians who play the "French" horn, and in a British-style brass band it is the tenor horn players. In many popular music genres, the term is applied loosely to any group of woodwind or brass instruments, or a combination of woodwinds and brass.

The music of New Orleans assumes various styles of music which have often borrowed from earlier traditions. New Orleans is especially known for its strong association with jazz music, universally considered to be the birthplace of the genre. The earliest form was dixieland, which has sometimes been called traditional jazz, 'New Orleans', or 'New Orleans jazz'. However, the tradition of jazz in New Orleans has taken on various forms that have either branched out from original dixieland or taken entirely different paths altogether. New Orleans has also been a prominent center of funk, home to some of the earliest funk bands such as the Meters.

A concert march is a march specifically composed for a formal concert or other audience event. While concert marches are usually written for a concert band, brass band or an orchestra, some concert marches have also been composed for solo instrument such as piano or organ. Prior to 1820, the majority of march music was composed for military use by military bands. Beginning in the 1820s a shift occurred in which mainstream classical composers wrote less frequently for military ensembles but would create concert marches to be played by orchestras as character pieces. Because concert marches are played by ensembles that are stationary, composers creating concert marches ceased connecting the march to the context of marching feet. This separation from its original context led to stylistic changes: a clear separation in style between the military march and the concert march.

In the United States, the popularization of the concert march can be traced to late 19th century with publications like Metronome magazine embracing the form as its own separate genre of march. With the growing prevalence of concert bands, the concert march developed as a way to perform marches on stage. John Philip Sousa was instrumental in the development of an American approach to the concert march. Previously the older da capo march utilized a circular structure which Sousa felt lacked a climax inherently within its compositional form. Within the concert march genre, Sousa pursued a new dramatic shape and theatricality within the march which he began experimenting with in the 1880s. His style influenced other composers of band music in this genre. Sousa was a supporter of the community band movement of the late 19th century and early 20th century in the United States, and many of his compositions, including his concert marches, became a staple part of the community band repertoire. Many of Sousa's marches for marching band were re-orchestrated by Sousa so that they could be played as a concert march. This required reducing the number of instruments which created a thinner texture within his concert march versions.

In Britain, a brass band (known regionally as a silver band or colliery band) is a musical ensemble comprising a standardized range of brass and percussion instruments. The modern form of the brass band in the United Kingdom dates back to the 19th century, with a vibrant tradition of competition based around communities and local industry, with colliery bands being particularly notable. The Stalybridge Old Band, for example, first performed in 1815 and is still in existence, although it did not become a brass band until the 1840s.

Bands using the British instrumentation are the most common form of brass band in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and are also widespread in continental Europe, Japan and North America. The tradition for brass bands in the UK is continuing, and local communities and schools have brass bands. British band contests are highly competitive, with bands organized into five sections much like a football league. Competitions are held throughout the year at local, regional, and national levels, and at the end of each year there are promotions and relegations. The 2019 holder of the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain was the Cory Band from South Wales.