Brass Blast

Participants in Brass Blast will experience a day jam-packed with great playing and masterclass opportunities. Some of the activities and perks include:

• Masterclasses with our outstanding KSU brass faculty
• Brass ensemble and like instrument ensembles
• Vendors with great brass gadgets and accessories
• Free concert featuring YOU alongside KSU's brass faculty and guest artists

8:30am - Registration Opens
9:00am - Welcome Session
9:15am - Masterclasses and Warmup Sessions by Instrument
10:15am - Rehearsals for closing concert (all attendees will get to perform!)
11:00am - Guest Artist Jim Pugh: classical trombone performance and masterclass for all attendees
12:00pm - Lunch and Exhibits Open
1:00pm - Rehearsal for closing concert
2:00pm - BSOM Brass Faculty and Guest Artist Jim Pugh, Masterclass
3:30pm - Closing concert with Mass Brass Ensemble performance by all attendees
4:30pm - Event concludes

Mr. Pugh began his career with world tours as lead and solo trombone with the Woody Herman Band and Chick Corea. Since 2003, he has been the trombonist for the seminal jazz/rock group Steely Dan, both recording and touring. Over the past thirty years, Jim became New York's top-call freelance trombonist for film scores, records, and music for television and radio advertising: he has lent his special talent to more than four thousand recording sessions. His trombone can be heard in recorded collaboration with leading classical and popular artists and orchestras such as Yo-Yo Ma, Steely Dan, Eos, Concordia, St. Luke’s Orchestra, André Previn, Paul Simon, Barbara Streisand, Tony Bennett, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Pink Floyd, and Frank Sinatra. Jim has also been called on to add his solo trombone to feature film soundtracks including A League of Their Own, When Harry Met Sally, Meet Joe Black, and on hit Broadway cast recordings City of Angels, Fosse and Victor/Victoria.

Jim Pugh is the only recipient of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Virtuoso Award for Tenor Trombone, awarded after being voted Tenor Trombone MVP by the New York recording community for five years. Jim's original music and arrangements can be heard on National Public Radio, in film scores, on jingles, on records, and since 2009, on the Tony Awards TV Broadcast. His composition, "Lunch with Schrödinger's Cat", received a Lincoln Center premiere in 1989 by Marin Alsop and the Concordia Chamber Orchestra and was most recently performed at the Krannert Center in 2012 by Sinfonia da Camera. Jim premiered his Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra in May 1992 with the Williamsport Symphony. It received its New York premiere in March 2000 with soloist Joseph Alessi and Leonard Slatkin conducting the New York Philharmonic. Peter Ellefson, Professor of Trombone at Indiana University, recorded the piano reduction version on his album, "Pure Vida".

Students of Jim's have gone on to active careers playing in New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, Richmond, New Orleans and Washington DC, military (Navy Commodores), writing (US Marine Band - chief arranger), and teaching (University of New Orleans, Bradley University).  Prior to his appointment at the University of Illinois, he taught at SUNY - Purchase College, the University of the Arts (Philadelphia) and at New York University. Mr. Pugh also appears frequently at schools and universities throughout the country as guest artist/clinician and has been a clinician/soloist at numerous Eastern Trombone Workshops (now the American Trombone Workshop) and International Trombone Festivals.

Welcome to the Brass Area at Kennesaw State University! Our dynamic, passionate, and successful students are consistently recognized at local, regional, national, and even international levels for excellence in their chosen fields. Current students and alumni work in virtually every facet of the music industry, as well as many related areas. Alumni have gone on to maintain highly successful and fulfilling careers performing in symphony orchestras, teaching at all levels, and managing top-tier performing arts organizations, just to name a few.

The Brass Area is led by our illustrious faculty, who are well-known throughout the United States as artist/educators. Collectively, they have performed with some of the top symphonic, commercial, and jazz organizations throughout the nation, in addition to teaching and presenting at universities, conferences, festivals, and more. Our students benefit from weekly lessons, studio classes, warmups, mock auditions, and other activities led by faculty, designed to prepare them for a stylistically and artistically broad range of scenarios in the professional world.