Tappan Brass Quintet

Tappan Brass Quintet Shines with Norfolk Chamber Music Fellowship
By Marci Janas '91
September 7, 2006

The Tappan Brass Quintet (clockwise from bottom left): Michael Brest, Jeffrey Staulcup, Michael Roest, Benjamin Zilber, and David Matchim.

The Tappan Brass Quintet (TBQ) was the only brass quintet—and the only undergraduate ensemble—to be awarded a fellowship to the prestigious Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, which took place in July and August at the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate in Litchfield Hills, Connecticut. Affiliated with the Yale Summer School of Music, the festival's admissions process is highly competitive.

And, of the 37 fellows admitted to the festival this year, seven were Oberlin students or alumni—a contingent second only to that of Yale’s. Violinists Emma Lundgren ’03, a graduate student at the University of Kentucky, and Soo-Min Lee ’06, received individual fellowships.

Being awarded a full fellowship to attend Norfolk is a high achievement,” says Associate Professor of Trumpet Roy Poper. “This excellent brass group received coachings from members of the brass faculty at Yale and comments from such acclaimed ensembles as the Tokyo and Vermeer string quartets—a phenomenal opportunity for an undergraduate quintet in an atmosphere of graduate and post-graduate students.”

The members of the TBQ are: David Matchim ’07 (trumpet), of Sacramento, California; Michael Brest ’08 (trumpet), of Portland, Oregon; Jeffrey Staulcup ’07 (horn), of Seattle, Washington; Benjamin Zilber ’08 (trombone), of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Michael Roest ’06 (tuba), of Kenosha Wisconsin. Matchim and Brest study with Poper; Staulcup is a student of Professor of Horn Roland Pandolfi. Zilber studies with Professor of Trombone James DeSano, and Roest, who graduated in May and has enrolled in the graduate program at the Juilliard School, studied with Teacher of Tuba Ron Bishop.

Zilber says that the ensemble’s rewards were considerable: “We gained a tremendous amount of focus and intensity at Norfolk. Our group had to change and expand its rehearsal methods in order to prepare ourselves for the frequent performances.”

The Tappan Brass Quintet performed on five young artist recitals in the festival’s celebrated Music Shed for an audience that included festival faculty and students as well as members of the surrounding community. They also played a twice-weekly fanfare during intermissions of the professional concert series.