Since last year, School of Music professor Velvet Brown has observed an increased student interest in brass chamber ensembles and realized a need to offer more opportunities for them to play.
Brown, a tuba/euphonium professor, said the School of Music faculty wanted its students to have more opportunities to play in smaller ensembles and to collaborate with other instruments in brass studios.
Today, they'll get the chance.
Tonight's student performance will feature a large number of small brass chamber ensembles, said Gretchen Renshaw (junior-music performance), one of Brown's students. Each of the individual ensembles will perform one piece.
"This year I have had the opportunity to play in more small brass chamber groups than ever before," Renshaw said.
Renshaw, who has been playing the euphonium for more than 10 years, added playing in smaller chamber groups is really an experience.
"It's great to hear brass instruments in smaller ensembles," she said. "They're usually in a marching band or larger ensemble, but to hear them alone is a much greater experience. You can really hear the different sounds created by the groups."
With trumpet, trombone, tuba, French horn and euphonium players, there is a great variety in music selection for tonight's performance attendees, Renshaw said.
The show will highlight brass quintets, tuba euphonium quartets, trombone quartets and others, she added.
A good portion of the musical selections for tonight's performance is classical-based.
"It ranges from 1600-style Bach to contemporary and then everything in between," Renshaw said.
Brown said students have put a lot of work into tonight's event.
"At times it was difficult because we rehearse at end the of day, when some students have already been playing for up to eight hours throughout the day, either after marching band rehearsals or on their own," she said.
That aside, this year, with the differences in ensemble size and groupings, "students are in a learning environment where they can learn to make music together, find tempos that work together for everyone and dynamics that work well," Brown said.
Brown added this year has been different than in years past in terms of the number of student performances.
"I have been here six years, but to have a series of performances as a norm, that's something new," she said. "Everyone wants to have an opportunity to learn and to perform and to grow."
