The House Brand Woodwind Ensemble first performed in March (the same concert on two dates) at the Univac plant in Roseville, Minnesota. The group consisted of Univac employees Joe Stefani and Dick Peik, clarinets, Glen Newton, French horn, and Kate Saumur, bassoon.
Glen Newton, the group's leader, had these comments about the quartet's April concert:
The HBWE's second concert was in the cafeteria of the Shepard Road plant. While the audience munched and played cards, we performed the same selections as in our first concert, plus the March from "Petite Suite" by Jan Koetsier and a composition of mine. The March was significant, because on this selection, Kate played the third part, and I played the botom part on my bass trombone (the better to cope with the glissando required in the part!).
This April 21 concert was the premier performance of "A Brief Fantasy on 'Sheep May Safely Graze'", which I wrote as a musical joke. It's mostly a nice quartet arrangement of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze", but just when the audience is getting lulled into complacency, it slips into "Yankee Doodle", "Moonlight Serenade", and "Yankee Doodle Dandy", each of which contains passages that sound much like Bach's masterpiece.