Welcome to the Official website of the Cincinnati Brass Band

Our Vision

To create a musically challenging and rewarding brass band that is competitive and community minded.

Our Mission

•Present brass band repertoire in an engaging and high quality manner through concerts, competitions, and community events.

•Build and maintain a standard of performance excellence by preparing and participating in brass band competitions (NABBA and others).

•Partner with other bands (professional, community, high schools and universities) to promote brass band music, benchmark our own performance standard, and connect to a potential pipeline of future members.

•Provide a challenging musical environment for the band members to grow their musicianship including improved technical and performance skills, expanded musical repertoire, and connections to a learning network.

•Provide friendship and enrichment through social engagement of our band community

About the Band

The Cincinnati Brass Band (CBB) was founded in 1993,  and organized by William Harvey of Buddy Rogers Music; Director, Anita Cocker-Hunt; and Assistant Director, Drew Cremisio. From humble beginnings, with its first performance at the Tri-County Mall, the CBB has gone on to national prominence. Venues include churches, schools, country clubs, festivals, and community concert series programs. A few notable performances include a televised concert for the unveiling of the refurbished historic Tyler-Davidson fountain on Fountain Square in Cincinnati, multiple performances at Cincinnati’s Riverbend and Music Hall venues with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops, and an appearance at the Great American Brass Band festival in Danville, Kentucky. As Cincinnati’s official Brass Band, the CBB performs roughly 15 times during the year throughout the greater-Cincinnati area. 

The Cincinnati Brass Band was proclaimed as the
“Official Brass Band of Cincinnati”
by the Mayor of Cincinnati in recognition of their contributions to the musical culture of Cincinnati.

Community Outreach has always been an important aspect of the band’s history, as it continues today. The band has collaborated with other members of the Cincinnati art community including: Cincinnati’s Music Resource Center, the Cincinnati  Conservatory of Music Prep Brass and the School for the Creative and Performing Arts along with several private and public schools throughout the greater Cincinnati area. We are excited to announce a new international partnership with the Ratby Brass Band of Great Britain.

The Cincinnati Brass Band is a member of the North American Brass Band Association (NABBA) which sponsors an annual competition of the member bands from across the U.S. and Canada. The Cincinnati Brass Band entered their first NABBA competition in 1996 and has competed successfully in both the Challenge and Honors sections.

What makes the brass band unique?

All the brass music (with the exception of the bass trombone) is scored in treble clef, a characteristic that over the years has allowed for remarkable freedom among certain bands, making the transition from one instrument to another somewhat easier. The number of members (instrumentation) is rigid, usually limited to between twenty-eight and thirty players, but the repertoire is unusually flexible, with concert programs consisting of anything from original works, orchestral transcriptions and featured soloists to novelty items, marches, medleys and hymn tune arrangements. With the exception of the trombones, all instruments are conical in design, producing a more mellow and richer sound, yet one that has wide dynamic and coloristic variety.

The term “brass band” is not entirely accurate, since brass bands also normally include percussion players play as many as twenty different instruments depending on the demands of the music. Standard acceptance of more than one percussionist in the brass band is really a phenomenon of the last fifty years, but one that has added immense challenge, interest and variety to the sound. Brass bands are one of the world’s most wide-spread forms of amateur music performance. Although brass bands were an important part of life in nineteenth-century America, they were superseded by larger concert and marching bands. However, many fine historic brass bands are still actively performing there today.

Instrumentation used in the Cincinnati Brass Band is also based on a British brass band tradition. Cornets (both Bb and Eb) are used instead of trumpets, and Eb alto horns take the place of French horns. The upper voice is completed with a Flugelhorn, while the bottom voice is composed of baritones, euphoniums, trombones and basses (tubas). A percussion section generates additional rhythmic effects.