The irresistible rise of Brass Band Oberösterreich

Rodney Newton talks to Thomas Beiganz, founder of Brass Band Oberösterreich and learns about the history of the band and how it is run.

At this year’s European Brass Band Championships in Linz, all eyes and ears will be on the ‘home team’ – Brass Band Oberösterreich - which, since its ‘European’ debut in the B Section in 2005, has risen like a rocket into the A Section, where it achieved a very respectable fifth place at the 2007 event in Birmingham and sixth place at last year’s contest in Ostend, despite some pretty tough opposition. This fledgling among European brass bands was the brainchild of its flugel horn player, Thomas Beiganz, who told me of his background and how the band came into being: “I was born in 1971 and I live with my family (my wife, Daniela, and my two sons, Manuel and Andreas) in Wallern, 25 kilometers from Linz, the capital city of Upper Austria. When I was ten years old, I started learning to play the trumpet at one of the 70 music schools in Upper Austria. I continued my studies at the Anton Bruckner Conservatory in Linz with Professor Josef Eidenberger, where I trained to become a music school trumpet and flugel horn teacher. After this, I had a further two years of trumpet studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna (the High School for Music - Austria’s premier music academy) with Professor Josef Pomberger, who was then principal trumpet of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. I currently work as a teacher in the world famous Landesmusikschulwerk Oberösterreich (Upper Austrian Regional Music School Foundation) which I joined in 1990, having been the leader of 200 brass teachers for nine years. In addition, I now lead the music school in Eferding (which caters for 1,000 pupils and has 42 teachers). The Foundation consists of about 70 music schools with 1,500 teachers for all instruments and about 55,000 pupils. I’m also a conductor of a wind band and, since 2002, I’ve been the manager of Brass Band Oberösterreich and the Upper Austrian Youth Brass Band, together with the conductor, Hannes Buchegger.