Goodbeatsensemble

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Goodbeatsensemble Classically trained musicians playing VGM and songs from movies and other pop culture! Based in the DC area. 🏛️ 🌸

10/15/2026

One last feature of Valentin at Capital One Hall - Tysons, VA ! Valentin Kovalev joins our expanded Good Beats Ensemble for a custom arrangement of “Seagull,” the second movement of Toshio Mashima’s Birds, a three-movement concerto for alto saxophone (I. Swallow, II. Seagull, and III. Phoenix).

Mashima was one of Japan’s most beloved composers for winds, and his path there was nothing short of incredible! First he studied engineering, then switched to music and spent years playing jazz trombone in jazz and pop bands before turning to composition. You can hear that jazz background all over his writing.
Birds was written for Nobuya Sugawa, the legendary longtime principal saxophonist and concertmaster of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, and it’s since become a favorite among saxophonists worldwide.

10/13/2026

This is the Saxophone and Voice duet you never knew you needed!

That’s right, today we’re going back to our Capital One Hall - Tysons, VA performance and taking a clip from one of the biggest hits of the night, Valentin Kovalev on saxophone and Imani Z Spicer on vocals, joined by the expanded Good Beats Ensemble for “One Summer’s Day” from Spirited Away, composed by the legendary Joe Hisaishi!

Most people probably know this piece purely as an instrumental track. However, Hisaishi later added lyrics by Wakako Kaku and released a vocal version called “Inochi no Namae” (“The Name of Life”), sung by Ayaka Hirahara. So while having a singer carry this melody isn’t unusual, we do think this might be the first time the piece has been arranged for a saxophone and voice duet! And after hearing it, we certainly don’t think it will be the last!

Huge thank you to Valentin and Imani for this moment. The full recording is on our YouTube (link in bio!).

What Ghibli piece should we take on next? Comment below! 👇

10/08/2026

This one goes out to all of our “Dear Friends”… (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) 😅

Featuring Valentin Kovalev live at Capital One Hall - Tysons, VA with the Good Beats Ensemble and Project Fusion , this is “Dear Friends” from Final Fantasy V, composed by Nobuo Uematsu!

Originally released in 1992, the track’s Japanese title translates as, “To My Dear Friends,” and it’s become one of the most beloved melodies in the entire Final Fantasy series. So beloved, in fact, that when Final Fantasy music made its first concert appearance in the United States, the show was named after it! “Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy” debuted on May 10, 2004 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and sold out in just three days. Its success launched a full US tour in 2005, which eventually grew into the Distant Worlds concerts still touring the globe today.

In other words, this little tune helped kick off the whole idea of video game music in American concert halls, which is pretty much the reason groups like ours exist. I guess you could say we owe it one. 😄

Thank you, Valentin, and thank you to all of our dear friends who came out to hear it live!

What’s your favorite Final Fantasy melody? Let us know down below!

10/02/2026

The Jaws theme has nothing on this!🦈🎷

Another clip from our concert Capital One Hall - Tysons, VA ! For this reel, our incredible saxophone soloist Valentin Kovalev returns with the expanded Good Beats Ensemble for “Escualo” by Astor Piazzolla, the Argentine composer who carried tango from Buenos Aires nightclubs into concert halls around the world.

“Escualo” means “shark” in Spanish, and Piazzolla meant it literally. He was an avid shark fisherman, and the title refers to the sharks he wrestled with during his summers in Punta del Este, Uruguay. Written in 1979, the piece tries to capture the drama of that fight: the pull, the resistance, and the sudden lunges.

Fun fact: Piazzolla dedicated it to Fernando Suárez Paz, the violinist in his quintet, partly as a dare. The two would compete over who made the fewest mistakes playing Piazzolla’s notoriously difficult music, and “Escualo” was built to be a beast for the violin, full of virtuosic double stops, tricky rhythms, and sudden metric shifts. Valentin of course manages all of that (minus the double stops) on a saxophone, which is a whole nother kind of shark fight. 😅

Another huge thank you to Valentin for joining us!

10/01/2026

Sunrise over Manhattan, this piece makes it easy to picture. Go check out the full recording via the link in our bio! 🌅🎷

This is another clip from our concert at Capital One Hall - Tysons, VA Classical saxophone virtuoso Valentin Kovalev joined our expanded Good Beats Ensemble for “Dreamy Dawn,” the first movement of Roberto Molinelli’s Four Pictures from New York.

For those who don’t know, Molinelli is an Italian composer, and he wrote this concerto for saxophone and orchestra in 2001 as a love letter to the Big Apple as seen through the eyes of a European in love with America, its music, and its culture. In “Dreamy Dawn,” he paints a clear, serene sunrise breaking over the Manhattan skyline.

Fun fact: three different saxophones are used over the four movements of the piece! “Dreamy Dawn” belongs to the soprano, “Tango Club” and “Broadway Night” to the alto, and “Sentimental Evening” to the tenor with jazz trio. So a full performance means the soloist is swapping horns all night. 🎷🎷🎷

Huge thanks to Valentin for bringing this to our stage, what an incredible performance!

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7921 Jones Branch Drive, Suite 230
McLean, VA
22102

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