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Renowned Boston Brass to perform with OHIO Wind Symphony on Nov. 17

is a quintet that has brought “colorful classical arrangements, burning jazz standards and the best of original brass repertoire” to all 50 states and over 30 countries. On Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m., the group will bring this repertoire to the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium as a part of the OHIO Performing Arts and Concert Series.

Boston Brass is composed of trumpeters José Sibaja and Jeff Conner, hornist Chris Castellanos, trombonist Domingo Pagliuca and tubist William Russell. Nearly four decades after the group’s creation, Conner remains as the last founding member.

“The group started back in 1986 when we were students at Boston University,” Conner said. “It was just a group of friends that got together that played chamber music.”

Since then, the group has evolved and brought unique concert experiences to audiences across the globe. Along with these performances, one of the group’s missions is, according to Conner, to “leave an educational footprint” wherever they go. This emphasis on education is one of the primary reasons Andrew Holzaepfel, the Executive Director of the Performing Arts and Concert Series, booked the group for a show in Athens.

“I brought in (Boston Brass) before just as an ensemble…and they do some great outreach and master class work, so I know the brass faculty were very excited to have them back working with their students,” Holzaepfel said.

Boston Brass will conduct its master class with the School of Music’s brass students the day before the quintet performs at Memorial Auditorium.

“We will go through a lot of our rehearsal techniques that hopefully we can pass onto them and improve their playing, and we talk a lot about making a living as a musician, as a chamber music musician,” Conner said. “All members of the quintet have a chance to teach, have a chance to coach, to talk...Hopefully we inspire students and give them something they can latch onto to make their own playing better, easier.”

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Boston Brass

Beyond the master class, Boston Brass will also be collaborating specifically with the Wind Symphony, OHIO’s top ensemble of wind players, during the performance.

“We will open the concert with an overture and then the Boston Brass will do a set,” William Talley, the director of Bands, said. “There will be an intermission, Boston Brass will come back and do a set, we’ll do another piece and then to close the concert we’ll do a combined piece.”

Both Boston Brass and the Wind Symphony will be drawing from their existing repertoires for the performance, and for the combined piece, the groups will perform “Malaguena.”

“It’s a big Latin piece of music,” Conner said. “It’s loud, it’s brassy, it was a piece that was made famous by the Stan Kenton Orchestra…This is a big brass favorite (and) a perfect piece to close the program.”

After the curtains close on the performance, Holzaepfel believes the audience will be left with memories of an unforgettable concert.

“(The audience) is going to be able to enjoy one of the top brass bands in the county, and they’re going to be able to enjoy one of our highest ensembles as far as quality in a one evening performance,” he said.

Beyond an effect on the audience, Talley is looking forward to the impact the group will have on his students.

“It’s always cool to collaborate with professional musicians,” he said. “Most of our students will be professional musicians in some way, either teachers or performers or both, so the opportunity to work with a group that is doing that, that is living their future profession, is really cool.”

Conner will be adding to an endless list of performance experience with this concert; he is just as excited to be sharing this work today as he was nearly 40 years ago, and he believes now is a more important time than ever for students and community members to attend events like these.

“It’s going to be a wonderful concert,” Conner said. “It’s really important to support the arts right now, it’s incredibly important…To have all these wonderful ensembles at the university is great, and we’re hoping people take advantage of that.”

Published
November 5, 2025
Author
Sophia Rooksberry