10th Annual Maryland Early Brass Festival

Release date: February 21, 2009 |

Goucher College will host the 10th Annual Maryland Brass Festival on Saturday, February 21, from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

The daylong festival features an array of free public events that celebrate early brass instruments. Attendees who are unfamiliar with these historic instruments will get a chance to learn more, and aficionados will have the opportunity to network, practice, and perform. A full schedule of events is available online at www.goucher.edu/earlybrass, but as always, the festival highlight will be a free public concert in Haebler Memorial Chapel at 7:30 p.m.

This year, the concert will feature performances by the Kentucky Baroque Trumpets; the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps; the Maryland Early Brass Consort; the Festival Natural Trumpet Ensemble; and the artist-in-residence, Paul Hopkins.

Hopkins is a nationally known performer of the baroque and classical horn. He is a member of the Baltimore Opera Orchestra and the Maryland Symphony Orchestra and a founding member of The Brass Express, a Maryland-based brass quintet. He performs regularly with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Concert Artists of Baltimore, National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Washington Bach Consort, the Wolf Trap Opera Company, and the Washington Concert Opera. Hopkins holds the principal horn positions with the Baltimore Handel Choir Period Instrument Orchestra and the Americantiga Orchestra of Austin, Texas. He also plays horn with Circa 1800 Chamber Winds, North America’s only period instrument wind quintet.

Hopkins will host a clinic about the natural horn at 10:30 a.m. in Merrick Lecture Hall. During the public concert he will be joined by violinist Risa Browder and pianist Michael Sheppard in a period instrument performance of Johannes Brahms’ Horn Trio.

Festival director Elisa Koehler will hold a workshop on the Renaissance cornetto at 1 p.m. in Merrick Lecture Hall.

The festival is sponsored by the Elizabeth B. and David Allen Robertson Lectureship Fund.