Brass
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Richard "Gus" Sebring, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Brass Department"To sit onstage in Symphony Hall among the most refined orchestral musicians in the world is an incredible experience. Players at the highest level demonstrate a complete mastery of instrumental technique, an amazing degree of finesse, consistency of intonation and rhythm, and a lyric, deeply emotive radiance."
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"I'm learning as much or more as a teacher than I did as a student here. I'm in a different place. I think a lot of people will say when they first start teaching that it really teaches them a lot about themselves and how they learn. You have to explain things that you just did before. Students are coming from all different perspectives, so they're asking questions about things I never even thought about. It makes me look at things deeper and be more honest with myself. I'm practicing things that I want to be able to explain to my students, because you can't be a hypocrite. You're totally responsible for what you're saying."
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Tom Plsek, Chair
DEPARTMENT : Brass Department"I believe in doing simple things as perfectly as possible. If you can do simple things really well, the difficult things will develop. I'm big on fundamental technique, the basics of breathing, embouchure, articulation, and slide/valve control. Mastery of these basics needs to be as subconscious as possible. You don’t want to have to think about them when making music."
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John Faieta, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Brass Department"In all my years of working with students on an individual basis, what I've noticed is that the kind of work you need to do in order to achieve success, those kinds of things are really important everywhere. If the students decide they want to be a performance person or they don't, it doesn't really matter. The point is, they're learning a discipline. It contributes to their work ethic, which influences everything they do."
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Robynn Amy, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Brass Department"I graduated from Berklee in 2003. I think that the student perspective is still fresh in my mind when I'm teaching, so I have a different perspective on how to reach them. But, I certainly have to adapt. When I'm dealing with younger-level improv students, we have to talk a lot more harmony and theory, because at this point they're being introduced to this stuff, but they haven't put the pieces of the puzzle together yet. So a lot of my lab classes are trying to link how their ear training classes and their harmony classes and their arranging classes all back up their playing. The other guys who already have all of the theory and improv chops, we're talking about style and interpretation and musicality and turning this thing that we've been working on for years and years into something that isn't technique-based, but based on emotions and trying to reach your audience."
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Ken Cervenka, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Brass Department"I think in early development, because everything is new to them, students want to try as much stuff as they can, so that takes precedence over the listening. . . . So one of the first things that we do in the improv class is an exercise where they have to stop playing, improvise, stop playing, and improvise for different preset lengths of time. That gets them listening. As soon as they stop playing, they have to deal with what they just played."
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