Of Fillmore's fifteen band pieces featuring trombones - popularly known as 'trombone smears' - Lassus Trombone is easily the most famous, though it was neither first or last in the series, which occupied their composer from 1908 to 1929. Along with the featured trombone glissandi (smears), the work has a distinctly ragtime character. Fillmore was a circus band composer, and slapstick aspect of the trombone smears were the perfect accompaniment to the antics of the clowns. The new Serenissima Band Classics series is designed to offer band directors and others interested in this genre newly engraved authoritative editions which are prepared from the primary sources using the composer's original instrumentaion, which is sometimes markedly different from that found in bands today.
