The ETSU Music Department hosted Brass Day 2023 on Saturday, an event that brought together brass musicians of all levels for a day of learning and practice.
Saturday’s event at the Martin Center included individual master classes on playing the trumpet, horn, tuba, euphonium and trombone. Students were also able to perform in ensembles and receive feedback from the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” Brass Quintet, whose members also taught the individual masterclasses.
The event also featured vendors like Greg Black Mouthpieces, S.E. Shires Co. and Music Doctors of Kingsport who were selling and auctioning off high-quality instrument supplies.
“It’s been really fun and really educational, too,” said one student in attendance who is a sophomore music composition major at ETSU. “I always love doing Brass Day, and it’s really cool to just come and hear from different people’s perspectives — people who are doing the thing that I want to do and who are in the field that I want to be in.”
This year’s Brass Day was organized by ETSU Department of Music faculty Sarah Fellenbaum, Steph Frye-Clark, Brett Long, Elliot Stanger and Justin Waller.
“We want to have students come on the campus so they can meet us and we can recruit (for the music program),” said Waller, “but the other part is that this is an event that can be an enriching experience for the students we currently have and for the community as a whole.”
Brass Day was open to college, high school and middle school students as well as community members, and all musicians who participated in the event were able to come together for a Finale Concert at the end of the day to show off the skills that they had practiced and the techniques they learned.
ETSU’s Music Department will have many more brass-centric events coming up, such as ensemble concerts, the Faculty Brass Quintet concert and the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra’s concert which will be at the Martin Center next week and feature 18 ETSU students as the offstage brass section for one of the pieces. These events and more can be found at https://www.etsu.edu/cas/music/events.php.
