During the XVIth century, in San marco Basilica of Venice, two organs were facing each other on the loft surrounding the choir. Both organist positions were occupied by famous musicians such as Giovanni Gabrieli, pupil of his uncle Andrea, and Gioseffo Guami, a pupil of Adrian Willaert.

The location of these instruments allowed these musicians to compose pieces ofr several groups of voices which were still called "choirs". Such a use of various choirs originates in the two organs of San Marco, but maybe probably more in the interpretation of psalms by separate choirs, the "cori spezzatti', in the whole Northern Italy.

This distribution of the sound amongst several choirs gave birth to a new musical style that most composers of the early XVIIth century considered : the "echo". This way of writing music allowed the composers to take advantage of the generous acoustics of churches and basilicas, providing a resonant representation of these places vastness. Moreover, the distribution of instruments by homogeneous families gave birth to the notion of orchestra, the way we nowadays consider it. The part played by these "choirs" becoming more and more important, and finally the composition of purely instrumental music resulted in the conception of magnificent Canzoni whose style was progressively exported in the whole XVIIth century Europe;7.

The programme "Venise sur Garonne", (Venise on Garonne river) gathers the most prominent pieces of work originally and mostly devoted to cornetti and sackbuts ans specially the Canzoni requiring the largest number of instruments, up to 22 distinct voices distributed among 5 different choirs. This form of composition, highly appreciated during the barock period, progressively disappeared with the emergence of the symphonic orchestra.

Thanks to the magnificence of this Venitian repertoire, so representative of our "ancient brass instruments", we naturally chose to pay tribute to the great polyphonist of this period, Giovanni Gabrieli, the precursor of the highest symphonic works of music history.