Brass Filipinas

Brass Filipinas is a group of musicians that aims to build a strong community of brass musicians in the Philippines. The members range from amateur musicians in local community bands to leading professional musicians playing in distinguished orchestras and jazz groups in the country. In 2016, we began to turn our visions into reality by organising our first brass festival which was a huge success. Many students and amateurs benefited from the event through the activities, workshops by professionals, etc. that we prepared for the participants in the 3-day festival. Not to mention the new connections they have created through the event. We feel that we achieved our purpose.

The most important thing that you should know is that everything we provided is for free. We just could not charge any amount to the participants who mostly come from various places (some from provinces) and has to travel to our event place. You should understand that time and money matters to most of them as transportation fees and food could be quite an expense for an average person in the Philippines. All the more, charge them with registration fee. We were lucky to find generous sponsors for food and venue, and some small donations to make it happen. There were also professional musicians that were generous with their time and expertise that gave it for free. But we were stillshort of funds. The rest of us had to sacrifice a lot of time and money to achieve our goal. (Personally, I had to buy my own flight tickets to lead our team. But this for me, is my way of community service.)

I've thought about seeking government support but...(unfinished).

The funds that we will raise here will be used to produce our next festival. We want to purchase new sheet music that would be challenging and enriching. We want to hire full-time workshop leaders who would be able to share their expertise and experience to the participants. We want to buy equipment (i.e. music stands, instruments that we need). Most of all, we would like to keep this event free-of-charge to the participants.

We are also looking at bringing the finest brass musicians to the local bands to provide workshops, which also requires funding.