This Arts Council-funded Project is entitled No BS! Brass Band Concert for Diversity and Equality. The project was proposed by Matthew Burtner, Chair/Professor of the McIntire Department of Music. 

In 2018-19, the McIntire Department of Music proposes to bring the No BS! Brass Band, an avant-garde 11-piece brass band from Richmond ,VA, for a residency as part of the department’s annual BrassFest. No BS! would perform an outdoor concert in the UVA Amphitheater promoting diversity and equality through music across grounds, present a master class, and offer private lessons to music students at UVA.

No BS! was recently featured on the nationally-syndicated NPR Tiny Desk Concert series and has performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Forbes Headquarters, among other venues.
NPR Tiny Desk Concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEjNggZsWow

UVA students and members of the Charlottesville community will be exposed to a high-energy live outdoor concert. In addition, UVA music students will be able to work directly with members of No BS! in both master classes and in private lessons settings. This will impact approximately 100 students of classical music, jazz, and from the band program as well as several hundred students across grounds. In addition to their growing international reputation, No BS! has developed a strong following in the Charlottesville community and has previously sold out the Jefferson Theatre. We are anticipating around 600 students, faculty, and community members attending the event, which will be free and open to the public.

Following on the sucess of this past year’s residency by Ensemble Galilei — which helped to further the Music Department’s mission to forge new associations across town-gown as well as across classical-folk lines in a collaboration with the Front Porch Roots Music School — the UVA and greater Charlottesville communities will gather together to celebrate the arts and diversity on and off grounds. Members of the No BS! Brass band feature artists with diverse cultural backgrounds and will expose audiences to the artistry of alternative musical styles. “Funky and danceable, the NO BS! Brass Band takes after the full black-music continuum you hear in groups like Rebirth or the Hot 8.” – NPR

The residency will build on the Music Department’s continuing commitment to pioneering innovative approaches to musical performance, composition, and research. By bringing musical ensembles of this caliber to the UVA community, the Music Department continues to cement its reputation as a cutting-edge academic music department nationally and internationally and as an institution that supports diversity in the arts.

The goal of the event is to celebrate diversity across grounds through the arts and to engage the connections between what are often perceived to be separate domains of modern-day music- making. The success of the residency will be based on the quality of the interactions with the UVA academic community (undergraduate, graduate students, and faculty) and beyond. The Amphitheater will attract a larger pool of UVA and Charlottesville community members and a further metric of success will be the number of people impacted by the concert.

The Arts Council provides advocacy, advice, and support in the Arts at the University of Virginia. It strives to develop and strengthen the bonds of interest and participation among the Arts Departments, their associated programs,  and their alumni and friends; to advocate on their behalf; to advise and assist with communications; and to help raise funds in support of academic programs, facilities, and special events. Among its multitude of arts advocacy efforts, the Council awards annual Arts Council Grants. These grants have, and continue to play an instrumental role in a number of  residencies, workshops, project and research-based endeavors proposed across Arts Grounds annually. This series of articles will highlight each funded project and serve to inform the UVA community of their unique timelines, progress and outcome reports.