That's Not Spit, It's Condensation!

#71: Jarrett McCourt

August 05, 2020 Ryan Beach
That's Not Spit, It's Condensation!
#71: Jarrett McCourt
Show Notes

Crisis Textline - text 741741 to be connected with someone to talk to anytime, day or night
National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 1-800-273-8255

Jarrett’s playing has been called “magnificent” by the Palm Beach Daily News and “warm, romantic and seamless” by the South Florida Classical Review. Jarrett has performed with a number of different high-level ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Flint Symphony Orchestra, the Ann Arbor Symphony, and the Windsor Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, Jarrett has performed under classical conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Robert Spano, Simon Rattle, Susanna Mälkki and Peter Eötvös, as well as alongside jazz heavyweights such as Esperanza Spalding, Wayne Bergeron and Nicholas Payton.

Jarrett has won several international competitions, including the New World Symphony Concerto Competition, the Marta Hidy Competition for Brass in Toronto, and concerto competitions across Canada and the U.S. Most notably, he won the top prize in the brass category of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal’s prestigious Standard Life Competition in 2014, becoming the first tubist to do so in the competition’s 75-year history. Additionally, Jarrett was a finalist in the XVI Tchaikovsky Competition (the inaugural year for brass participants) in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the only North American tubist to participate in the live rounds. Jarrett has performed as a soloist with the New World Symphony, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Toronto, the University of Western Ontario Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble, and the London Concert Band. During the summers, Jarrett has performed with the Verbier Festival Orchestra, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, the Spoleto USA Festival Orchestra, the Aspen Festival Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra Academy of the Pacific. Jarrett was recently a guest on the popular Brass Junkies podcast, speaking largely about ways to improve one’s mental health as a musician in the 21st century. In his spare time, Jarrett volunteers with the Crisis Text Line, a global not-for-profit organization providing free crisis intervention and suicide prevention via SMS message.

As an educator, Jarrett was formerly on faculty at New World School of the Arts at Miami Dade College, and has also served on faculty at the National Youth Orchestra of the United States and at Expressions Music Academy in Troy, Michigan.

He earned a Bachelor of Music (Tuba Performance) with a minor in Ethics at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario in 2013 and two Masters degrees (one in Tuba Performance and the other in Chamber Music) at the University of Michigan in 2015. His principal teachers have been Brent Adams, Dennis Nulty, Fritz Kaenzig, Craig Knox, Warren Deck and Gene Pokorny. Jarrett is a Miraphone Artist and performs on the 1281 Petrushka F Tuba.

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