Brass Clinician & Guest Conductor
Creating Exciting Educational Experience
Dr. Bough has served as a frequent masterclass clinician and/or conductor for the Music for All National Concert Band Festival and Summer Symposium during the last fifteen years. As a Yamaha tuba artist, he has served as a consultant with the Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps, the Colts Drum and Bugle Corps, and the Phantom Regiment Alumni Corps. He is equally energetic and effective whether serving as a guest conductor for the entire ensemble or as a clinician for the brass section. In either case, the clinic format can be customized to range from a single class period to a few hours or even a few days.
He enjoys working with ensembles from a broad spectrum of skills and experience levels, from the most advanced high school bands to middle school students just learning to play. He brings the same rigorous standards of tone production, intonation, articulation and artistry whether working with concert ensembles, marching bands, drum corps or WGI Winds.
Testimonials
Music Advocacy
Music Advocacy Interview
United Sound - An Interview with Julie Duty
At the heart of United Sound is the relationship between the peer mentors and the special needs students. In fact, this relationship is the primary focus of the program, and in that respect, it is like a club. To get started, it requires both a music teacher and a special education teacher. The special education teacher trains the peer mentors to be teachers, and the music teacher is in charge of the new musicians. Both the band director and the cooperating special education teacher receive a few hours of training, held in part via video and in part over Skype.
We started testing the materials we developed for the program in early 2014 at Desert Vista High School in Arizona. We learned that kids were successful at the instruments they wanted to play the most, just like everyone else. So, from that point forward, the new musicians participate in an instrument trial night, just like any other student starting band or orchestra. People talk about me as an advocate for special needs students, but I consider myself an advocate for music education. I want everyone to be in band, and right now we are missing out on the 13% of public school students who receive services for special education.
Guest Tuba Soloist
Thomas Bough has been a Yamaha sponsored artist for fifteen years. In this capacity, he has performed at regional, state and local venues across the United States. Typically, he performs his own compositions for solo tuba and wind band, although each of these can be performed with piano accompaniment as well. The technical difficulty of the band accompaniments range from an easy Grade 3 to Grade 4.5. On many occasions, Bough has performed two or more solos with band accompaniment on the same concert. In these situations, the younger band performs one of the more accessible solo accompaniments while the more advanced groups tackle more complex accompaniments.
Dr. Bough’s diverse performance background includes wind bands, brass bands, orchestras, chamber music, jazz bands, Dixieland, the Walt Disney World All American College Band and the Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps. He is a Yamaha sponsored artist, and performs on the Yamaha 822 CC tuba and Yamaha 822 F tuba. In this capacity, he serves as a brass consultant and guest instructor with the Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps and the Colts Drum and Bugle Corps. He was also an instructor with the Phantom Regiment Alumni Corps in 2016. Bough has contributed nearly twenty articles and hundreds of new music reviews to the Instrumentalist magazine, School Band and Orchestra magazine, and DCI Today, as well as articles to five volumes of the Teaching Music Through Performance series as well as Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz.
