Centenary Brass was formed in 2002 by students at the Birmingham Conservatoire. The main aim was to develop chamber music experience and explore wide ranging repertoire. Since then the group have performed in a variety of situations including educational workshops, chamber music festivals, competitions and various public performances around Birmingham.

Performing in recitals on a regular basis provides us with opportunities to explore new brass ensemble music and classical arrangements. We have performed many times at Birmingham Conservatoire including being featured as part of the chamber festival for the last couple of years. We have also performed recitals in other venues and as part of recital series giving us good experience of building programmes for a mixture of audiences.

In 2005 we won the Bernard Brown Brass Ensemble Prize and were invited to enter a prestigious inter-collegiate competition in Glasgow. This gave us the chance to commission our first work which we premiered in Glasgow.

Providing light entertainment has been very successful over the past few years, we have performed indoors and outdoors for many local organisations such as The Mailbox, the Bullring and principally the Birmingham City Council at a variety of events.

Between 2003 and 2005 we took part in an educational workshop project titled ‘music mites’. This was a scheme run in Milton Keynes and involved working with pre-school and early year’s school children. During this time we learned many new skills and although we began in a musical role the second year of the project involved us leading the workshops.

In April 2006 we embarked upon our first studio recording sessions to produce a specialist wedding demo CD.

In the future the group plan to continue educational projects whilst also exploring new performance opportunities.