One of the big pushes we’ve been making at NHS this year is to bring in more guest artists to provide new and different perspectives on performance for our students, and this spring the focus has been on brass. Earlier this year we hosted the Narragansett Brass, based out of Rhode Island, and this past Friday we were able to bring in Bach, Conn-Selmer and Denis Wick clinician Chris O’Hara from the South Shore Conservatory to spend an afternoon working with the NHS Symphonic Band brass section on fundamentals of high-quality brass performance. Chris’ full bio can be found here, at the South Shore Conservatory website, where he is the chair of the brass department.
The workshop preached the value of always focusing on the very basics of performance, with time spent working on posture, stretching, breathing exercises, mouthpiece buzzing techniques and issues surrounding double tonguing. According to junior euphonium player Zach Cadman, most of what was covered were things he’d heard before, but simply by getting some fresh perspective on the fundamentals, when he went home that evening and did some playing on his own, “I immediately sounded better.”
We thank Chris O’Hara for his talent, enthusiasm and time, and we look forward to expanding this kind of a partnership with the South Shore Conservatory in the future!
