Ray Burkhart plays the earliest known cornet with Perinet valves, in the collection of Bruno Kampmann, Paris

Trumpeter/musicologist Ray Burkhart presented a paper at the 2007 Historic Brass Society Conference held at the Cité de la Musique in Paris from 29 June to 1 July 2007. The theme of the conference was "Paris: The factory of ideas," and it attracted scholars and performers from Great Britain, the USA, France, Italy, Belgium, Canada and Greece. Concerts by La Musique des Gardiens de la Paix de la Prefecture de Police and Ensemble Les Cuivres Romantiques, "hands-on" sessions with the curators of the Musée de la Musique, and a field trip to see Bruno Kampmann's vast instrument collection augmented conference sessions on brass repertoire, brass instrument conservation and restoration, brass instrument manufacturing, organology, Paris Conservatory history, Adolphe Sax, and early jazz criticism.

Burkhart's paper "The Paris Factor: French influence on brass chamber music, 1840-1930" documented early French contributions to the brass chamber music repertoire within the context of emergent string and wind chamber repertories and examined the success of the Sax/Distin collaboration and its apparent strong influence on brass chamber music in France and Russia. Chamber music for ensembles of homogeneous brass instruments was also discussed, as was a possible source of inspiration for Poulenc's youthful Sonata for brass trio. A Paris-USA link was revealed in the 1896/7 European tour of the Park Sisters, a cornet quartet from New York City whose success abroad was used to promote their subsequent American tours in Lyceum and Chautauqua, the earliest known of approximately sixty small brass groups discovered by the author to have been active primarily throughout the US and Canada between about 1895 and 1935.

Burkhart is Instructor of Baroque Trumpet at Claremont Graduate University and Instructor of Trumpet at Pomona College.

Links:
Historic Brass Society
HBS Paris 2007 Conference brochure (100k PDF)
Raymond Burkhart