Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

Have not heard this group in awhile although I always hope to stumble across them playing in Union Square!

I love these guys… every day on my way home from work, I hope to find them performing at the Union Square station. By far my fave street performers in New York. Plus they play in other countries too and have opened for major concerts.

This guys are awesome, as you approach them the music makes it impossible just following your way. You have to stop, join the crowd and enjoy their energy and rythm while they play their great music.
We have the good luck to listen to them twice in the Subway Station at Times Square and 42^st, playing «War»
The second time I bought one of their discs for ten dollars, and it is a really good recording including some environmental subway sounds into their pieces, It is great, and I am just sorry I din’t get two of them.

i get sucked in hearing these guys after work on my way home. really enjoy listening to the drummer and the tuba player.

I saw these guys in concert at the Shomburg and was happy to catch them a few weeks later in Union Square. I got off the bus before my stop, just to hear them. Besides being amazing (and hypnotizing) musicians, they’re very approachable. I highly recommend getting at least one of their CD’s. To complete the day’s serendipity, I happened on a guy with unusually cerebral T-​shirts, set up across from Forbidden Planet. On this day, he had a skateboarding Ganesh and a mysterious, tartan-​clad witch doctor, among other designs. I got one with a Buddah design to wear to yoga.

i love these guys even though tycho played me.

Chicago in the Square! (Union Square)
Hypnotic Brass is one of the best imports from the Windy City.
The brothers (Literally*) pull in the crowds with their lively music. Their energy is infectious, as they move in time with the piece.
A definite crowd pleaser, but I would have preferred to enjoy the show on the other side of 14^th Street — Pedestrians kept walking through to/​from Whole Foods, Forever 21 & DSW.
$ 15 buys you a CD to take home.
* «…The eight young men are brothers, and they all learned to play music together, immersed from early childhood in the teachings of their father, trumpeter and composer Kelan Phil Cohran.
Cohran is a hugely influential, if enigmatic, figure in the history of Chicago music. An early member of the Sun Ra Arkestra and a cofounder of the AACM, he formed and led the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, whose work in the mid-​60s — which combined African roots with funk and soul as the basis for a system of melodic improvisation — presaged numerous developments in jazz, from the hard electric fusion of Miles Davis to the cascading kalimba patterns Kahil El’Zabar plays in his Ritual Trio.»
Via
If don’t manage to catch them live, watch them here: