About us
The formation of the Brass Band Düren
The Brass Band Düren ist one of the oldest german Brass Bans playing in the typical british style. Its beginning goes back to 1998 where Lothar Esser founded the so-called "Brass Band - project Düren". It was titled a "project orchestra" because the musicians only got together for a number of practises with the object of a single project : an annual concert. From this "project orchestra" evolved the Brass Band Düren. In the beginning we lacked many of the typical british instruments, such as cornets, tenor horns or euphoniums with piston valves and we used to play with their german correspondents such as trumpets and french horns. This however has changed in the meantime and except for the tuba section the "musicians" of the Brass Band Düren play original intruments.
Parting from the "project orchestra"
In 2005 Martin Schädlich, who so far played cornet in the Brass Band Düren, took over the Brass Band as the musical director. After a short time he had turned the "project band" into one with a permanent cast practising monthly in the secondary school in Düren-Gürzenich. Besides the permanent cast the number of musical activities also continously increased. Next to the traditional annual concert in autumn we added church concerts in spring to our agenda.
Supra-regional performances
Already in the following year of 2007 the activities were further intensified and for the first time spread over the boundaries of Düren.
In spring 2007 for instance, the Brass Band Düren was invited to perform as part of the social programm of the Charlemagne Prize awarded to Javier Solana by the city of Aachen. For that occasion the Brass Band Düren played a concert together with "Das neue Orchester", a symphonic orchestra from Aachen.
Shortly after that the german brass band scene met for the first time ever at the Bundesmusikfest (music festival of all music-associations in germany) in Würzburg. In that occasion we met for a competetion where the Brass Band Düren came in second place in the second division, right after Cologne Concert Brass, our friends from Cologne.
