General History
The brass band movement dates back to the early nineteenth century and England's Industrial Revolution. With increasing urbanization, employers began to organize bands in order to counter the increase in political activity, which had begun to preoccupy blue collar workers during their leisure time. Originally, the bands were funded by collieries, mills and other manufacturers, and many retain corporate sponsorship today.
By 1860, there were over 750 brass bands in England alone. The instrumentation of these bands varied considerably until the second half of the nineteenth century when it became more or less standardized, developing into the present day complement of Eb and Bb cornets, flugelhorn, tenor horns, baritones, trombones, euphoniums, BBb and EEb basses and percussion. Brass bands in Great Britain presently number in the thousands with many of the bands having origins prior to 1900.
Although brass bands were an important part of life in nineteenth-century America, they were superseded by larger concert and marching bands. During the course of the 20th century, it was primarily the Salvation Army that kept the brass band tradition alive, and it has been only in the last twenty-five years that brass bands have enjoyed a resurgence of interest in North America. The formation of the North American Brass Band Association (NABBA) has been crucial and influential in this renaissance. There are presently several hundred brass bands in North America.
Northern Michigan Brass Band
In the fall of 1998, four northern Michigan brass band enthusiasts met to discuss the feasibility of starting a British-style brass band in northern Michigan. These were 1) Jon Arens, a Salvation Army officer from Alpena, 2) Brad Moors, retired cornet section leader of the US Army Brass Band, 3) Gordon Palmer, a retired engineer who grew up in Scotland and 4) Ralph Schweigert, Director of Bands at Gaylord High School. This is a sparsely populated region and our biggest concern was finding enough interested brass players with the necessary skills to effectively perform challenging brass band repertoire.
We invited Dr. Paul Droste from The Ohio State University, who at that time was also a clinician for Yamaha, to present a day-long clinic in January 1999. We invited about 20 brass players of which 17 actually attended. At the end of a day of playing a lot of brass band repertoire and experiencing Dr. Droste’s inspiring enthusiasm, we decided to create the Northern Michigan Brass Band (NMiBB). Since many of our players had to travel over 100 miles one way, we decided that we could not have the usual week-day evening rehearsals. We settled on meeting twice monthly on Sunday afternoons from 2:30 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. This is the schedule we maintain today.
Our first year, we presented only 2 concerts. Since then, our season has grown to 10 performances, 4 series of 2 concerts each. We try to have 4 rehearsals for each concert series. Since we do not consider ourselves belonging to any one community but to the entirety of northern Michigan, our concert venues vary and are spread across the upper third of Michigan’s lower peninsula. We struggled with instrumentation for several years, but for the last 10 years, we have enjoyed complete instrumentation with a full complement of 30 capable players.
NMiBB guest conductors have included Dr. Paul Droste, Professor Emeritus from the Ohio State University and conductor of the Brass Band of Columbus; Bramwell Gregson, the famous Canadian brass band conductor; James Curnow, the renowned American brass band composer and conductor; Dennis L. Horton, Professor Emeritus at Central Michigan University; Kenneth Bloomquist, former Director of Bands at Michigan State University and conductor of the Brass Band of Battle Creek; and Dr. Timothy Topolewski, Professor Emeritus at the Crane School of Music,, State University of New York, Potsdam.
Featured soloists have included Michael Mayhew, Associate Principal Horn of the Cleveland Orchestra; Bradley S. Moors, a NMiBB founding member and a former Cornet Section Leader of the United States Army Brass Band, "Pershing's Own"; Charles K. Smith, Professor Emeritus and retired Director of Choral Activities at Michigan State University; and Dr. Edward R. Bahr, NMiBB's Principal Euphonium and Professor Emeritus at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi.