Dr. Deanna and Promoting the Horn

Yesterday I had a very enjoyable time in the Doctoral oral defense presented by Deanna Swoboda, who is currently Assistant Professor of tuba/euphonium at Western Michigan University and formerly served for six years as tubist of The Dallas Brass.

Deanna has been working on ways to promote brass instruments quite actively for a number of years, her most notable product being the Band Blast Off DVD. It is sold by Focus on Music and has been quite successfully used to recruit more students into band programs. If you are a band director working to build a young band program, or a music store owner looking to build up your rentals, you really should check out this product. Deanna has also frequently gone on tour to promote band in school presentations.

Her DMA research project, “Tuba Tex: How the West was Fun,” was designed to promote brass instruments among grade school students. It is a new project for her but relates not only to her DVD but also to her 1999 children’s CD “Deanna’s Wonderland.”

One thing that horns and tubas have in common is we are in a sense the “canaries in the coal mine” for bands. We are the most likely instruments to not be well represented in a band program, at least among the brasses—call me biased, but a lack of horn players is a sure sign of a weak band program, and there are too many of these around. As you are reading this blog you are most likely a horn player. All hornists need to be very aware that no matter where we are or what level we are at we must all do our part to promote the horn. Less than a full section or no horns is a bad situation.

I have been working for a number of years on materials related to trying to teach the horn more effectively to young students. Above all, again, we horn players have no option but to do our part to promote the horn. Every school should have full horn sections! Let’s all work toward that goal.