UT Tyler’s summer music camp for brass players will be held week after next, starting June 19. Jeremy McBain, who holds a doctorate in Musical Arts, is camp director and UT Tyler associate professor of music and trumpet. McBain shares details of Brass Camp.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. This is year number two for the annual UT Tyler Brass Camp. Young musicians 13 to 18 get to tune up their skills and work with some terrific teachers and fellow musicians. The director of Brass Camp is UT Tyler Assistant Professor of Music Dr. Jeremy McBain, and he’s our guest today. Welcome.
Jeremy McBain: Oh, thanks. Glad to be here.
Mike Landess: So this is the second year for Brass Camp. How’d the first year go? What did you learn that’ll be implemented in this camp?
Jeremy McBain: Oh yeah, we had a great time last year. We had two sextets — originally had hoped for two quintets — and we ended up with two extra enrollees, so we expanded out to a sextet.
So yeah, it was fantastic. And looking forward to our growth this year. We already have doubled the numbers of last year, so looks like we’re gonna have three to four brass quintets that we’ll be able to coach in this one.
Mike Landess: Wow. And is the registration open or is it closed?
Jeremy McBain: Yeah. We’ll keep registration open till June 16, but interested participants should really get in touch with us and request a T-shirt size as soon as possible.
Mike Landess: T-shirts–the most important part. Gotta have the T-shirt. So where will the instructors come from who are a part of this camp?
Jeremy McBain: Yeah, the bulk of the instructors are UT Tyler faculty here. So, myself, I’ll be coaching trumpet ensemble and brass quintet, and I’ll be joined by Micah Bell. And he’s the professor of trumpet over at TJC. We’re also in a brass quintet together. For horn, we’ll have Tammy Moorehead, and she’s also new to the faculty actually this coming fall. Brett Copeland lives over in DFW, and he just joined our faculty this year as our tuba professor, and then Austin Seybert is our trombone professor and also director of bands. He’ll be on staff as well.
Mike Landess: Jazz Camp’s been around for a while, and you’re not going on at the same time, but are there some similarities there, or how does that work?
Jeremy McBain: The bulk of our camp is brass chamber music, so we will do mostly classical repertoire. But we do have some jazz numbers as well in the quintet and the other ensembles. So there’s a little bit of overlap in the repertoire, but most of it is building chamber ensemble skills, figuring out how to work together as musicians without a conductor. So that’s where the brass quintet comes in and the coaching that we do throughout the week.
Mike Landess: Now, will there be a performance after this is all done, this week of training for these young people?
Jeremy McBain: Absolutely. The student performance will be the last day of camp. That’s June 23 at 4 p.m. (in Braithwaite Recital Hall), and that will consist of brass quintets.
We’ll have three to four brass quintets. The students will be performing without a conductor, and then we’ll have trumpet ensembles, trombone choir, horn choir, a large brass ensemble, probably 20 to 25 players there on stage. And also a tuba euphonium ensemble. So a lot of different performing ensembles for the students.
We’re really, really happy to have Elmer Charampi here as our guest artist. So this is the first time that we’ve had a premier guest artist here with Brass Camp. So that’ll be a big infusion of excitement into the camp. He’ll be here Wednesday, June 21, and give a master class in the afternoon for all the campers.
And so he’ll be coaching some students and also performing for them a little bit, sharing some of his warmup routine and some things that have worked for him to reach such a high level of playing. And also his performance–he’s doing a recital on Wednesday, the 21st, that evening, and that’s gonna be a fantastic recital. (7 p.m. in Braithwaite Recital Hall)
Mike Landess: Tell us a little bit more about Elmer.
Jeremy McBain: Yeah, Elmer is in the Dallas Symphony. He’s been there for a handful of years. He’s a native of Peru, actually, and did his studies in Boston before he won the job with the Dallas Symphony. So, I’m very excited to have him over here for this camp. And my students are always telling me, I ask students in lessons all the time, what recording have you heard of this piece?
And usually, it’s Elmer Churampi–OK, he’s recorded a lot. It’s been, and he was active before the whole COVID pandemic, doing a lot of recording. But I think that he’s added a great wealth of recording that our students can tap into online. And so check him out on YouTube, for sure.
Mike Landess: Tell us a little bit more about you and your background. How did you get interested in trumpet? Was that your first instrument, instrument choice?
Jeremy McBain: It was, actually. And yeah, I got started back in the 6th grade, part of the Texas band program. I grew up in Pearland. A great program down there and had some excellent directors. Yeah, I’m very excited about trumpet early on. My dad was a trumpet player as well, so a lot of music in the family.
Mike Landess: Was your dad a professional musician? Did he travel?
Jeremy McBain: He was an educator and did a little bit of touring. He played some pit stuff, some off-Broadway stuff.
Mike Landess: You’ve played in a lot of different orchestras over the years. I was looking at your bio. Run some of those by us. This is very impressive.
Jeremy McBain: Thank you. My main gig is at Texarkana Symphony as the principal trumpeter there. And I’ve been there for, let’s see now, 6 years, I believe.
So that’s my main gig. And then I also sub with the East Texas Symphony. I’ve subbed with the Arkansas Symphony and some other area orchestras, too.
Mike Landess: It sounds like an amazing life. We had the rock band Chicago at the Cowan Center not long ago, and arguably they brought brass and popular music together in a unique and very engaging way.
Jeremy McBain: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a lot of horn players that are out there backing bands still today. A friend of mine, John Rutherford up in Detroit, has enjoyed playing with Bob Seger and his band. So yeah, there’s a lot of that still going on for sure.
Mike Landess: Where will these young people end up? Do you have any idea, will they end up being educators? Will this be something that’ll be a lifelong hobby or an opportunity to, maybe they’re a part of their church orchestra or something like that?
Jeremy McBain: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we hope that they continue their musical, playing music for years to come.
Most of them will be, are interested in music and want to become music educators, so maybe they’ll enroll at UT Tyler or other universities. And then hopefully, yeah, we always see people after concerts that they say, I wish I would’ve kept playing after high school or after college.
So we hope that they’ll keep that music alive, even if they go into other professions. Support the arts, be in a community, band, a community jazz ensemble or a church ensemble.
Mike Landess: When you have the opportunity to be with other educators, perhaps from around the country, or certainly within our state, but when you had that time to spend with other educators, what do you talk about in terms of the future of what you’re doing and the kinds of challenges that you face?
Jeremy McBain: Yeah, what times have changed since I was in school, for sure. I think that musicians have to be a lot more creative and network even more than ever because there’s so many musically talented students who are graduating every year. We talk about here at the university educating our students about that, those networking skills and really connecting with the community as well.
So that’s one of our ambassador ensembles for the School of Performing Arts, our Patriot Brass Quintet. We get out in the community and perform quite a bit, and Dr. Sarah Roberts also has the Swoop Jazz Collective that she coaches and is also active in the community. But I really appreciate the work that y’all have done creating this radio station here at KVUT. And it’s such a great wealth of music that we can tap into on the radio. So I appreciate your work here with the radio station for sure.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been UT Tyler Brass Camp Director, Dr. Jeremy McBain. For more information on UT Tyler’s music camps, go to our website, KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
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