Brass Bulletin No. 40

Christian Baechler

Behind a debate once confined to musicians lies a wider shift in how performance anxiety, medication and professional responsibility began to be separated instead of confused.

Jean-Pierre Mathez

As costs rose and ambitions grew, an editorial from 1983 captures the fragile balance between sustaining an international brass journal and preserving its vision.

Jean-Pierre Mathez

Behind the rise of a future industrial giant lies an unexpected lesson in craftsmanship, cultural exchange and the discipline that reshaped wind instrument making.

Graduation project in technical method

Edgar Bürger

Long before sensors entered the practice room, one horn student measured embouchure pressure by hand, challenging assumptions that still shape brass pedagogy.

Heinrich Thein, Max Thein

A forgotten solution to Baroque virtuosity meets modern orchestral demands, where historical ideals and practical performance no longer follow the same path.

The instrument maker's point of view

Peter Hirsbrunner

A legendary orchestral tuba became the starting point for rethinking how craftsmanship, industrial methods and musical results rarely follow the same path.

Jeffrey Agrell

The horn was once considered incompatible with jazz until changing ideas of sound and musicians like John Graas quietly overturned that certainty.

A Trombone Artist

Anatoly Barantsev

Behind decades of orchestral excellence, one trombonist shaped a school of playing whose influence reached far beyond Leningrad and the concert hall.

Ch. Bernsdorff-Engelbrecht

Virtuoso showpieces once filled concert halls, yet today the rare pairing of horn and harp preserves a forgotten musical world shaped by performers themselves.

the Scale of Just Intonation

Jack Holland

Long before electronic tuners, brass players faced a choice between mathematical order and acoustic truth, with consequences that still shape ensemble playing today.