Brass Promotion was founded in 2005 as a not-for-profit association with the aim of promoting music in all its forms, free from any philosophical, political or linguistic preoccupations.
In 2005, as part of the festivities organised to celebrate Belgium's 175th birthday, our association wanted to highlight a trumpeter from Liège, Théophile Charlier (1868 - 1944), by giving his name to the First International Trumpet Competition organised in Belgium. The second edition of this international competition was held in the first week of November 2015 at the Abbaye de Malonne (Namur), and the third in November 2019 at the same venue.
For more than twenty years, Brass Promotion has been developing activities to promote brass music. The Eghezée Big Band Academy (BBAE), which was set up in the early 2000s in collaboration with the Eghezée music academy, came back under the Brass Promotion umbrella in 2010 and continues to perform successfully at various events. In March 2014, the world of brass music in Wallonia was enriched by the birth of a new group, the Namur Wallonia Brass Band (NWBB), bringing together some thirty high-level professional and amateur musicians. In 2018, the Ensemble à vent du Namurois (Namur Wind Ensemble) was born, giving amateur musicians and young academy students the opportunity to perform a varied repertoire in the Harmonies-Fanfares section. The association rounds out its activities by recording CDs to showcase the work and excellence of the musicians involved in our activities. Since January 2020, Brass'promotion has decided to extend its field of action by offering instrumental training given by professionals as well as collaborating with professional orchestras (ORCW, SOV, Brussels Jazz Orchestra, etc.).
Every year Brass'promotion organises a series of concerts in collaboration with internationally renowned artists. These include Eric Aubier, Fritz Damrow, Jason Bergman, Tristan Pfaff, Paolo Fresu, Rheinhold Friedrich, Guy Touvron, Fred Mills and many others.
In setting up Brass Promotion, we wanted to emphasise human values and artistic convictions: passion, a taste for excellence, humility and tolerance, qualities that are found in all musical societies. As in a team sport, the musician who is a member of a musical ensemble must blend in with the rest of the group, enjoy himself and give pleasure to his colleagues. Just as in sport records are made to be broken, every musical project can be perfected and man never reaches his limits. Striving for excellence is not elitism.
