News & Events

Registration for the HBS Symposium 2024 is now open. 

See and download the final full schedule here!

The HBS SYMPOSIUM 2024 will take place Wednesday July 10 – Saturday July 13, 2024 in New York City. The event will be centered in the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theatre, 10 West 64 th Street, just steps from Central Park and 1 block from Lincoln Center. This is a state of the art theater with excellent projection and sound, a baby grand piano, comfortable tiered seating, and a variety of other amenities. It is located within the Westside YMCA complex, which also provides a variety of housing options at a reasonable cost.

Our keynote speakers include Sabine Klaus, Peter Holmes and John Wallace. There will be over 35 presentations on a wide range of topics, playing sessions open to all participants, and opportunities to try instruments from attending makers, as well as evening concerts and a tour of the Met Museum instrument collection led by Bradley Strauchen-Scherer on Saturday afternoon.

Registration includes all sessions and concerts, including playing sessions, a tour of the Met Museum collection on Saturday afternoon, and 2 concerts at the Museum on Friday and Saturday evenings. Light refreshments will be available during the breaks as well.

Rates are: General: $250   Students: $150.

Holger Eichhorn, pioneering cornettist, musicologist, polemicist, and editor, has left us. I first met Holger in 1975, when, having heard news of a new cornetto player in Basel, he invited me to come to Berlin to meet him. I took a night train, which Holger (and his younger brother Klaus) met at the station. He accompanied me to his place and then listened intently as I, eyes barely open, warmed up on my Monk resin cornetto. I still remember vividly his first words, “Hmm… nice, but still rather trumpetlike.” With that visit I came to know Holger’s passion for the cornetto, his intensity, his unwillingness to compromise on anything, his immense knowledge and his propensity to play on instruments that had nothing to do, that I could discern, with historical cornetti. As I got to know him better over the next couple of decades, all of those impressions only deepened - and also my perplexity and my respect. 

            Dr. Joanna Hersey, longtime HBS member and the organization’s Secretary, was honored at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference held May 29th-July 3rd, held at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. The International Tuba Euphonium Association (ITEA) celebrated the organization's 50th anniversary with a week of concerts, student competitions, masterclasses, and historical presentations. Participants gathered from across the world, joined by local educators, students, community members, and a variety of exhibitors showcasing instrument design and new music.

Congratulations to the 2024 Christopher Monk Award recipient, Howard Weiner!

Congratulations to the 2023 Christopher Monk Award recipient, Jeremy West!

West is an evangelist for the cornett, the often-overlooked wind instrument which was held in the highest possible regard during the 16th and 17th centuries. He continues to play a lead role in re-establishing this instrument as a recognized and accepted virtuoso and ensemble instrument and now has thirty-five years of top class playing and recording experience with many of Europe's leading renaissance and early baroque ensembles.

Founder and former president of the Historic Brass Society, Jeff Nussbaum, is selling his collection of Renaissance wind instruments. They are being sold by the Von Huene Workshop. Included for sale are: 

1. Silverstein cornetto in A
2. Silverstein cornetto dirritto in A
3. Bob Marvin mute cornett in A circa 1967
4. Serge Delams muste cornetto in G
5. Silverstein Renaissance soprano and alto recorders
6. Kobliczek recorder in G
7. Hopf bass Renaissance recorder
8. Korber soprano and alto crumhorn

For those interested, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Additionally, a wide selection of brass instruments from the collection are being sold by Chris Belluscio. Those interested may contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Read about a fun new video game, "Trombone Champ," that is making headlines lately. Read the full article here: 

Romantic Brass in Context: 19th-Century Brass Instruments in Military, Church, Chamber, Opera, and Orchestra, the Sixth International Romantic Brass Symposium is set for  April 20-22, 2023 in Bern, Switzerland, held by Hochschule der Künste Bern in collaboration with the Historic Brass Society.

The well-established Romantic Brass Symposia present current research on brass instruments, concentrating on music of the long 19^th century (1789–1914). After conferences on the keyed trumpet and the ophicleide, French horns, the materiality of brass instruments, the saxhorn, the conservation of historical brass instruments, and the trombone and acoustics, this sixth edition is open to all brass-related topics, highlighting interaction of brass instruments with their musical contexts. It is held in collaboration with the Historic Brass Society. Keynote addresses will be given by Sandy Coffin, Ignace De Keyser, Trevor Herbert, Sabine Klaus, Arnold Myers, and Anneke Scott.

It will include papers, lecture recitals and concerts with spoken commentary on all topics of brass instruments of the long 19^th century, including historically informed performance, style, repertoire, history, and instruments. The official language for the conference is English.

The symposium website is www.hkb-interpretation.ch/rbic. All information on program, fees and accommodation will be published there.

Serving as Secretary of the Historic Brass Society is Dr. Joanna Hersey, a tubist, composer, and educator. In addition to her tuba degrees, Joanna also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Her work in the areas of race and gender is found in Volume 20 of our Historic Brass Society Journal, where she showcased the activity of female brass musicians touring through the American vaudeville era. Joanna served as Principal Tubist with the United States Coast Guard Band, and is now Associate Dean of Student Success and Curriculum for the College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Music, at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

We are very grateful for all that Joanna brings to the HBS!

Congratulations to the 2022 Christopher Monk Award recipient, Charles Toet!

Toet was born in 1951 in the Hague. He received his musical training at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, where he studied modern trombone with Anne Bijlsma (sr.) and Arthur Moore and where he began to specialize in early music and Baroque trombone. He taught at the same institution from 1976-2018, as well as at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basel) from 1990-2019 and the Musikhochschule in Trossingen (Germany) from 1996-2007.

He currently divides his energies between the seventeenth century (mostly with Concerto Palatino of which he is the co-founder) and the Classical and early Romantic repertoires, played on original instruments.

Charles Toet has performed and recorded extensively with Bruce Dickey and Concerto Palatino and with numerous other ensembles of particular importance to the history of early music, including Syntagma Musicum of Amsterdam (Kees Otten), The Taverner Players of London (Andrew Parott), the Hilliard Ensemble, Hespérion XX (Jordi Savall), La Petite Bande (Sigiswald Kuijken), the vocal ensemble Currende (Erik van Nevel), Tragicomedia (Stephen Stubbs), Cantus Cölln (Konrad Junghänel), Bach Collegium Japan (Susuki Masaaki), The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton Koopman), and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées (Philippe Herreweghe).

Considered a pioneer in the performance practice and repertoire of the historical trombone, Charles Toet is frequently asked to be a guest performer and teacher in early music projects and courses around the world.

For more information about The Monk Award, visit https://historicbrass.org/community/awards/christopher-monk-award. 

A close-knit group of historic brass lovers and performers recently enjoyed the first post-pandemic Historic Brass Festival at the Vintage Brass Festival in July in Northfield Minn., USA. The two festivals have collaborated about every three years since 2006. 

This year, there were 11 presentations, an informal Baroque trumpet playing session, a virtual presentation of this year’s Christopher Monk Award, and around 35 musical groups played in about 75 total performances over the duration of the festival. Some of the performers even included four members of the Historic Brass Society’s executive board. Stanley Curtis (HBS president,) Elisa Koehler (HBS vice-president,) and Steven Lundahl (HBS Executive Board member,) and Michael Connor (managing editor of Hisoric Brass Today) all played in Connor’s Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Band. Connor was one of the presenters. Curtis also played in the Kentucky Baroque Trumpets group.

The festival was also an opportunity to present the 2022 Christopher Monk Award to Charles Toet. Read more about Toet and this prestigious award.

The North American Baroque Trumpet Competition and Conference (NABTCC) was held April 11-12, 2022, at the University of Kentucky (UK). The event was sponsored by the Historic Brass Society (HBS), and organized through the HBS Events Committee. Additional sponsors included Maller Brass, Brass for Beginners, The Baroque Trumpet Shop, the UK School of Music, and the Singletary Center for the Arts.

The event began with a master class by Stanley Curtis, President of HBS and assistant professor at Colorado State University. Curtis discussed Girolamo Fantini's 1638 trumpet treatise and how it provides valuable pedagogical information for those learning Baroque natural trumpet. At 11am, Barry Bauguess (trumpet), Paige Whitley-Bauguess (dancer), and Steven Plank (organ), presented a lecture-recital, "Dance and Rhetoric in Baroque Music"; They were assisted by trumpeters Elisa Koehler, David
Wharton, Stan Curtis, and Jason Dovel.

Following the competition, a closing concert featured all of the guest artists and members of the UK
Baroque Trumpet Ensemble. The event was hosted by Jason Dovel, associate professor at the University of Kentucky, along with
support from UK teaching assistants Victor Yuen, Austin Stunkard, and Madison Barton.

Guest artists perform in the closing concert.