The brass area at the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music recently received good news on a few fronts, beginning with the 2016 National Trumpet Competition.

Held at Columbus State University in Columbus, Ga., the event saw two UGA ensembles advance to the semi-finals of their competition: the UGA Trumpet Quintet (Dan Price, Tyler Jones, Victoria Bethel, Yanbin Chen and Deborah Caldwell) and the UGA Trumpet Octet (Michael Meo, Ben Otieno, Lillie Smith, Robert Chambers, Geoff Wood, Tyer Jesko, Emmy Johnston and Joel Garcia).

Many of UGA’s 35,000 students traveled somewhere over spring break, but most didn’t leave the country. Fewer still crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Only six flew to Nairobi, then took a seven-hour van ride to Eldoret, Kenya, to teach music. 

A group of eight from the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music’s music education and piano performance areas are in Africa from March 10-21, setting up distance learning and orchestra programs for a fledgling music department in western Kenya.

The final Hugh Hodgson Faculty Series recital of the season brings Shakhida Azimkhodjaeva, violin faculty at the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music, to the Ramsey Concert Hall stage on Thursday, March 24, at 8 p.m.

Accompanied by fellow School of Music faculty member Evgeny Rivkin, professor of piano, Azimkhodjaeva will perform works from a number of 19th and 20th century Russian composers.

Martha Thomas, a Hugh Hodgson School of Music professor at the University of Georgia, has been named the second recipient of the Despy Karlas Professorship in Piano, which was established by friends and admirers of the late UGA music professor.

The UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music will host two Midwestern musical talents when Robert White and Helen Lukan perform in Edge Recital Hall on Tuesday, March 23, at 11:15 a.m.

White, assistant professor of trumpet at Western Michigan University, is a member of the Western Brass Quintet – one of the United States’ oldest established professional brass chamber ensembles. White maintains an active career as an orchestral, chamber, commercial, and solo trumpeter and has played with numerous notable ensembles, including the Detroit, Grand Rapids and Milwaukee Symphonies.

Nach Saxophone Quartet from the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music has advanced in two significant, national competitions for saxophone quartet and woodwind chamber music.  

Coached by Connie Frigo, associate professor of saxophone at the School of Music, the quartet members are performance majors Rick Firestone, soprano, a first year master’s student; Caroline Halleck, alto, a junior; Hassan High, tenor, a senior; and Charlie Young, a first year doctoral student. 

UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music faculty members revisit and expand their personal repertoire when Maggie Snyder, associate professor of viola, joins Liza Stepanova, assistant professor of piano, in Ramsey Concert Hall on Tuesday, March 15, at 8 p.m.

The Second Thursday Scholarship Series at the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music usually features one or two of the School’s talented ensembles or performers, but March’s edition offers quite a bit more: five times more, in fact.

The UGA Choral Showcase in Hodgson Concert Hall on Thursday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m. (on the third Thursday this month due to this year’s Spring Break) brings five of the School of Music’s accomplished vocal ensembles to the stage for a night of choral music new and old.

The UGA Symphony Orchestra (UGASO) returns to the works of Gustav Mahler with a performance of his Symphony No. 6 in Hodgson Concert Hall on Thursday, March 3, at 8 p.m.

The symphony, comprising four movements and performed here with no intermission, clocks in at approximately 83 minutes. For this reason, concert-goers are being advised to arrive early, as late seating won’t happen until the end of the first movement, which is roughly 25 minutes long.

It’s a demanding piece of music, and it will ask the UGASO for all it can give.

The Hodgson Wind Ensemble (HWE) opens the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music’s March slate with a strong, diverse program in Hodgson Concert Hall on Tuesday, March 1, at 8 p.m.

The ensemble’s first Hodgson Hall appearance of the spring will be a varied, repertoire-spanning affair, with wind band classics from Václav Nelhýbel and Ralph Vaughan Williams, newer works by Tyler Grant, Takuma Itoh and Roberto Sierra and a clarinet concerto from the turn of the 20th century.