A 40+ year tradition will return at 3 pm on Sunday, Dec 17 when the Western Brass Quintet and friends present "Brass for the Holidays" in the Dalton Center Recital Hall. The newest member of the Western Brass Quintet is David Mercedes, who joined the Irving S. Gilmore School of Music at Western Michigan University in September as Lecturer of Tuba and Euphonium. He tells Cara Lieurance about the upcoming concert, which gives student performers in brass and percussion an opportunity to join their instructors onstage to play a wide range of seasonal music. He talks about the experience of moving from Texas to Michigan to take on a new studio of players, and shares his teaching philosophy of setting big goals at the beginning of the student-teacher relationship.
Mercedes is a founding member of the innovative fLOW Quartet (2 euphoniums/2 tubas), which released "Four Dreams: The Music of Yuji Ono" in 2020. The quartet enjoyed a memorable trip to Japan to give a series of concerts.
Tickets and more information about "Brass for the Holidays" is available at the School of Music website.
