Star City Brass
-- Allison Mall ('04)

Chris Magee ('94, '00M) and Bill Folger ('79) performed their debut concert with Star City Brass, a pickup group of all brass instruments, last February at Raleigh Court United Methodist Church. The concert included music by Gustav Holst, Scott Joplin, J.S. Bach and Claude Debussy. On the fast track to building a reputation, the band also performed at the 2003 American Guild of Organists national conference in Northern Virginia in June.

Star City Brass is named for Roanoke -- the Star City of the South. The group had been playing weddings and regular gigs for about a year in 2002 when they decided to make their musical association official. The quintet consists of trumpet player Magee and tuba player Folger, as well as trumpeter Ric McClure, French horn player Charlene King and trombonist Spencer Taylor. All of the members have years of academic and professional music experience in addition to careers ranging from financial management to Web site design to physics. Magee completed his doctor of musical arts degree in trumpet performance and pedagogy at the University of Iowa this year.

Magee was born and raised in Harrisonburg, and used to "hang around the school of music when he was in high school." After college, he was staff trumpeter at Walt Disney World for three years and served as instructor of trumpet and jazz studies at Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss. He has played lead trumpet with artists such as the Four Tops and The Temptations and performed with Brass 5. He is principal trumpet with the Shenandoah Symphony Orchestra and a professor of trumpet at Washington and Lee University.

Folger, who graduated with a B.A. in music education, has studied with Gale Dillehay (U.S. Air Force Band), Bruce Butler (New Orleans Symphony) and Michael Thorton (Cincinnati Symphony). He is principal tuba and music librarian with the Lynchburg Symphony Orchestra, has been an instructor at Lynchburg College and Liberty University. He is currently manager of the music department of Barnes and Noble in Lynchburg.

By performing throughout Virginia, which Magee says has a "rich musical heri-tage and cultural infrastructure," he hopes that "Star City Brass becomes a popular regional brass quintet in greater Virginia and surrounding states."