Director of Chamber Music
Scott Tegge dedicates his career to the performance and repertoire expansion for the tuba and brass quintet, and to developing the next generation as an educator.
With a long-standing passion for chamber music, Scott has performed extensively in brass quintets since the age of fourteen, and founded his current ensemble, the Gaudete Brass Quintet, in 2004. (pronounced gow-day-tay.) Toward the goal of leaving future musicians robust and expanded repertoire, Scott and the Gaudete Brass are particularly committed to commissioning original works for brass, and have premiered more than fifty new works to date. Keeping a rigorous touring schedule, the Gaudete Brass Quintet has performed at a variety of venues including the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago, Symphony Space, Kaufman Music Center, and Carnegie Hall in New York City. Gaudete Brass has also recorded critically acclaimed albums featuring many of their commissions and other original brass works.
Scott has presented extensive educational programs, master classes, and concerts at The Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music, Arizona State University, University of Michigan, and Vanderbilt University, as well as at numerous high schools and community music schools as part of the quintet’s touring activities.
As an educator, Scott upholds three main performance principles: good sound, confidence, and artistic point-of-view. In his teaching, Scott helps students develop their own voices as musicians through confidence building and self-directed learning. Believing that no music is worth making if it does not sound good, he also emphasizes developing a solid technical foundation with his students, focusing on good habits in breathing, phrasing, and dedication to fundamentals such as long tones and scales. Scott builds a strong camaraderie among his students to support one another in taking performance risks and to learn how to play for each other and the public with conviction. Over time, they learn to play beyond the right notes toward interpretative music making and performance.
In addition to teaching tuba, euphonium, chamber music, and orchestral studies, Scott has developed methods to teach students how to think differently about a life in music, which he now teaches as workshops and college courses on creative career building.
Scott is on the faculties of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois Chicago, and regularly freelances with orchestras in the Chicagoland area, and is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer on inventive career development, entrepreneurship, and building successful teaching studios.
As a 1998 CYSO alumnus, Scott is proud to have been coaching chamber music at CYSO since 2005.
