Last Sunday's Octagon Music Society concert at Clarendon Muse saw the very welcome and much overdue return of Onyx Brass to present a varied and hugely enjoyable programme of music drawn from over four centuries. The members, trombonist Amos Miller, trumpeters Niall Keatley and Brian Thompson, horn player Andrew Sutton and David Gordon-Shute on tuba, are all busy full-time orchestral players who come together, certainly not for relaxation but for pleasure, to enjoy the brass player's idea of chamber music.

Although this country has a unique heritage of brass band music, it is only within recent years that players have turned their attention to discovering and developing a fresh repertoire of approachable and enjoyable music for smaller forces. So their programme balanced arrangements of late Renaissance music with contemporary items written specifically for brass quintet.

Additionally, their choice of music was designed to link pairs of works which illuminated the other - thus a fugue by Bach was followed by a fugue by Shostakovich and music from the 1600s was reflected in a Fantasia on theme of Thomas Tallis (yes, that one) by the contemporary multi-talented brass player and composer, Timothy Jackson. Perhaps the most intriguing item was a group of four short 'works' also by Timothy Jackson named Anything But - and it was just that....anything but brass music.

The quintet laid down their instruments, rose to their feet, and revealed further talents as actors, declaiming John Hegley's one word poem 'Me', surely an anthem for the self-obsessed, then miming Don Patterson's wordless evocation of travelling to meet an old Chinese philosopher (and failing to do so!), and finally poems by Carole Ann Duffy and Spike Milligan, the latter a paeon to English Tea! An absolute show-stopper from perhaps the only stand-up non-playing brass quintet.

The concert finished with a deft Dance Suite by the revered horn player Alan Civil which included a Tarantango, a marvellous combination of tarantella and tango - totally bewitching.

The players all brought to the concert a crisp attack and unanimity born, no doubt, from the 15 years this quintet have been musical friends and partners. To add to the evening's pleasures, members of the quintet introduced the music and showed themselves to be witty and persuasive advocates for the music.

Anthony Bramley-Harker