What's a Dectet?

The standard configuration of Surrey Brass for concerts is a Dectet - a 10-piece line-up consisting of four Trumpets, one Horn, four Trombones and one Tuba.  

In practice, Surrey Brass often supplements the dectet with additional players to add power, musical flexibility, and simply to share the work in a long and tiring concert. Often, we add a one or two members to the trumpet section. This also allows more of our members to participate, something we are always keen to do. If we are feeling ambitious it's possible to achieve 8 trumpets, 4 horns, 5 trombones, 2 tubas, 3 percussion, keyboard, soloist.

We also like to work with many of our partner choirs (both adult and children) especially at Christmas time in our legendary Carols By Candlelight concerts. 

Musical Leadership

Although the Surrey Brass dectet has sometimes rehearsed and performed without a conductor, for more challenging programmes it's essential for us to be led by a talented Conductor. We have been very fortunate to have experienced many experts who have made huge contributions to our development over the years.

Variety

Like the smaller Quintet, the dectet is a standard brass ensemble formation which means that plenty of music has been composed and arranged for these particular forces, offering a huge range of performance options.

Not content with playing available repertoire, we have added to it and most of our Innovation has produced commissions for large ensemble, for example "Concorde" by Rob Davies has been at this scale.

As if that is not enough, our talented members often make their own arrangements of music specially for the group, extending the repertoire even further.

Sheet Music for some of our commissions and own arrangements are for sale in our Shop - for example this Fairy Tale. You'll find recordings and other products there too.

Opportunity

We always seek new performing opportunities for the Dectet, so if you might have one, please get in Contact. Let's put on a show together!