Dublin Youth Brass Band

An Opportunity for ALL students
The Dublin Youth Brass Band (DYBB) provides a unique opportunity for all students to experience a traditional British Brass Band. (What is a Brass Band?) Beginning students can be challenged at their level, while more advanced students can be challenged with solo parts and unique instruments like the soprano cornet and flugelhorn. Low brass students can either read music in familiar bass clef, or take on the challenge of learning to read treble clef music like the adult brass bands.

Dublin Youth Brass Band was created by the Dublin Community Bands in 2014. Originally started as a yearly summer workshop, the band was expanded in 2022 to also have a brass and percussion day and full winter/spring term. DYBB students work with and frequently play next to members of the award-winning Dublin Silver Band (DSB) and Dublin Metro Brass (DMB). These adult mentors help from within the section, run sectionals, and serve as examples of life-long music makers. DYBB is a payment optional band, which means that all families have the option to pay what fits within their budget with no questions asked. Additionally, all brass band-specific instruments are provided for free. DYBB strives to remove the barrier of finances in extracurricular music-making to truly make quality music education inclusive. The ensemble is generously supported in part by the Dublin Arts Council. DYBB has performed at the Ohio Brass Arts Festival, Dublin Festival of Brass, the Dublin Brass Band Showcase and will perform for the first time at the North American Brass Band Association Championships in 2025.

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Dr. Amy Schumaker Bliss, Director
Dr. Amy Schumaker Bliss has built a career that combines her love for performing with her love for teaching music. As a performer, Amy is always busy creating new projects. She released her album Couleurs en Mouvements in 2019 and she is featured on two of Atlantic Brass Band's CD's (The Spirit of Christmas and Metropolis). She was recently a featured soloist with Rowan University's wind band (Gordon Jacob's Fantasia 2016), Rowan University's wind ensemble (Cosma Euphonium Concerto 2017), and a featured artist at the International Women's Brass Conference (2017). She plays solo euphonium in Dublin Silver Band and Athena Brass Band, an all-star British Brass Band featuring women brass and percussion players from around the world. She recently has collaborated with Kent State University for the wind ensemble premier of Lucy Pankhurst's Luminaries (2021), Athena Brass Band for a performance of Peter Graham's Brillante at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic (2021), and Lancaster Allegro Symphony for the orchestral premiere of Seven Wen, Derek Kane's euphonium concerto (2022).

She is currently in demand nationwide as a clinician, teacher, and euphonium soloist. She has a studio of about 25 in-person and online students on euphonium, tuba, music history, music theory, and beginner piano and she teaches general music online to homeschoolers around the world. Amy's most recent teaching position before moving to Ohio was teaching euphonium at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey from 2012-2020, where she also taught music appreciation, coached the tuba/euphonium quartet, worked with the Atlantic Youth Brass Band and Rowan University Brass Band, conducted summer brass choir and played in the Atlantic Brass Band as solo euphonium. Now that she's in Ohio, Amy is currently starting up a youth brass band through the Dublin Community Bands system that will be getting started in the summer of 2022.

Amy's most recent publications include two works about British brass bands: a children's book called "Amy's Brass Band", and a paper on the history of the British brass band movement in North America. The paper, “The Brass Band Bridge and J. Perry Watson: A Link to the Beginning of the North American British Brass Band Movement," was published in the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) Journal and was praised as being “probably the best history of the establishment of the British-brass band movement in North America” (William Berz, editor WASBE Journal). The children's book, "Amy's Brass Band," is surpassing all expectations of popularity and introducing the genre to a whole new generation of future musicians. "Amy's Brass Band" is available worldwide through Amazon, and in the US through Walmart and Target online. Amy is in the process of re-publishing her popular children's book in Spanish to reach an even wider audience.

Amy attended Capital University Conservatory of Music in Columbus where she double majored in euphonium performance and music education, studying with Dr. Thomas Zugger and James Swearingen. She earned her master’s degree in euphonium performance studying with Steven Mead and David Thornton at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England where she earned Honors with Distinction in Performance. In 2015, she graduated from Rutgers University as the school's first doctoral euphonium student, studying with Dr. Stephen Arthur Allen and mentored by Aaron VanderWeele. Amy lives just outside of Columbus, Ohio with her husband Adam and two sons.