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The Brass

Ranging in age from 11 to about 50, the Pentecost Lutheran Church Brass bring approximately 80 years of trumpeting experience to the balcony rail on a regular basis. Most Sundays and holidays, you will find some combination of (from left to right)

Per Werner, John Warder, Tom Hasko and Dan Hasko

accompanying the organ on congregation hymns in anywhere from one to three parts of melody and harmony.  In addition, guest trumpeters such as Gary J. Dennison and Dave Graves, both who grew up playing their horns on a regular basis at Pentecost, usually bring their trumpets along when they are in town and join the day's Brass in a familiar balcony setting.

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Because the trumpets and clarinets are considered "B-flat" instruments, they cannot play the music as it is written in the hymnal or other songbook, but instead need to play one note higher than what is written in order to be in tune with the organ, piano or keyboard.  With enough experience, a musician can learn to look at one note and by instinct, play another, or "transpose" the notes in his head while he plays.  It's not always the easiest thing to do and can be rather difficult for a younger musician (as well as a lot of more experienced musicians).

In days of old, the only solution was to hand write each song in the correct key.  While the same process still has to be performed today, a musical keyboard attached to a computer with fairly inexpensive software now makes this process a little bit easier, enabling the user to input the non-transposed notes from the keyboard, allowing multiple copies to be printed at once and allowing the transposed music to be saved on the computer for future use.  Organist Joyce Hasko and trumpeter Tom Hasko have spent many hours in recent years transposing music to allow as many musicians as possible a chance to participate in the worship services.