ITEA presidential election 2025
Dear ITEA Members,
In October 2024, the Nominating Committee invited all ITEA members to submit nominations for our future Vice President/President-Elect (2025-2027), who will then serve as President (2027-2029) and Past President (2029-2031).
The Nominating Committee received many nominations and has completed the vetting process. We are pleased to announce our three candidates:
Velvet Brown
Beth Chouinard-Mitchel
Chris Dickey
Each nominee’s statement and bio are below.
It is important to remember that electing an ITEA president is one of the most important choices a member makes. We encourage you to vote for the candidate you feel will best lead ITEA well into the future.
Voting begins February 1, 2025 and runs through March 31, 2025. To vote, one must be:
1. A current ITEA member
2. Logged into your account
The Nominating Committee thanks all who participated in the nomination process. We would like to remind all members that we will be going through this process again in two years. Should you be interested in running, please reach out to our Executive Director for more information.
Sincerely,
Nominating Committee:
Kevin Wass (Past President) – Chairperson
Joanna Hersey (Executive Committee – Treasurer)
Dan Burdick (DEIB Committee)
Fernando Deddos (President of the Brazilian Euphonium Tuba Association)
Karen Dunnam (Amateur/Enthusiast Committee)
Sam Revis (Student Representative)
You must be signed in as ITEA member to vote.
Meet The Candidates:
Velvet Brown
Statement
I am honored to be nominated for the position of Vice-President/President Elect of the International Tuba and Euphonium Association. I have served as Secretary of this organization and as a member of the Board of Directors. I have additional administrative experience as a founding and current member of the International Women’s Brass Conference, as an Associate Director of the School of Music at Penn State, and as founding and current Director of the Tuba Euphonium Fest at Orvieto Musica in Italy.
I have worked in all of my activities as a tuba soloist, professor, conductor, composer, and administrator to create a sense of belonging for all of the various member groups of an organization. I am so encouraged by the work of the current and past ITEA Board of Directors, conference hosts, and membership to create a space where everyone belongs and can thrive. How can we continue this work and be even more welcoming where all members feel a meaningful sense of safety, celebration, and belonging?
I think a large part of this answer is linking safety, celebration, and belonging to all of our committees so it continues to be a central focus of the policies, procedures, and work product we produce. This will help our conferences and other activities create spaces for all of our members – members of all playing levels, members of all ages, members of any nationality, race, gender, creed, gender identity, or sexual orientation, members of all financial backgrounds, and members from our local organizations and chapters through our international members and affiliates.
This focus on safety, celebration, and belonging will help us engage with all tuba and euphonium players and enthusiasts and this engagement will help us achieve the goals in our mission statement and strategic plan. For when everyone feels included, we can foster bonds among all tuba and euphonium players, celebrate diversity, support professional development, promote sharing of resources, and encourage teaching and learning.
This focus on safety, celebration, and belonging will help us continue to stabilize the internal structures of the organization for its long-term health including supporting the work of the investment committee, the development and endowment committee, and the audit committee. Working with these committees and our very capable Executive Director will enable us to not be as dependent on membership fees in the future.
Finally, I feel I have the needed skill sets for this position: I am a tuba soloist and orchestral player that performs in both the Classical and Jazz genres having worked and performed in Europe, Asia, Canada, the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. I have been an amateur and continue to work with tuba and euphonium enthusiasts. I teach and work with high school and college students. And I have held administrative positions with the ITEA, the IWBC, Penn State, and in Italy. I hope you vote for me so we can lead the International Tuba Euphonium Association into a future we envision together.
Biography
Velvet Brown loves interacting with audiences, students, amateur enthusiasts, and fellow professionals around the world. As an international soloist, professor, composer/arranger, chamber ensemble performer, recording artist, conductor, and orchestral player, she serves as the David P. Stone Endowed Professor for the School of Music at Penn State and the Associate Director of the School of Music for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Brown is also Artist Faculty at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. She is a founding and current member of the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Brass Conference and a past Secretary and member of the Board of Directors of the International Tuba Euphonium Association.
Velvet has performed and taught in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Finland, France, England, Hungary, Slovenia, Russia, Japan, Cuba, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Ms. Brown is currently the principal tubist of the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra. She has served as principal tuba with the River City Brass band, guest principal with the Lahti Philharmonic in Finland, the Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Women’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and as substitute or additional tubist with the Saint Louis Symphony and Fort Wayne Philharmonic.
Velvet has been an invited solo artist or tuba solo artist adjudicator at multiple International Tuba and Euphonium Conferences since 1998. She has also served as guest conductor for festivals in the United States in Maine, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania as well as abroad in Austria, Finland, Italy, Slovenia, Japan, and Canada. Velvet serves as the Artistic Director of the Tuba and Euphonium Fest for Orvieto Music in Orvieto, Italy, and previously served as the Artistic Director of the Chromatic Brass Collective. In addition, she was on faculty for the Domaine Forget Music Académie in 2024.
Velvet is a founding member of Boston Brass and is founder and current member of Stiletto Brass Quintet, Monarch Brass Quintet and Brass Ensemble, the Quintet of Americas, and the Pennsylvania Brassworks. She has been honored to arrange and compose for many of these groups as well as receive commissions from other artists for her original compositions.
Velvet has released six solo CDs and has collaborated on recordings as a soloist with the Stiletto Brass Quintet featuring Doc Severinsen on one of her original compositions, Howard Johnson and Gravity’s recording Testimony as lead tuba, and as solo jazz tuba with the Cleveland Jazz Ensemble recording Lonnie’s Lament. Velvet is a Buffet/Crampon Performing Artist and will release her new tuba, the Velvet Touch, designed to fit most people in 2025 and is a performing artist for Denis Wick mouthpieces, mutes, and accessories.
Beth Chouinard-Mitchel
Statement
What an honor it is to be a presidential nominee for the International Tuba Euphonium Association. I am humbled and proud to be a member of this wonderful organization.
The mission statement of the ITEA reads: The ITEA shall foster bonds among all tuba and euphonium players, create enthusiasm for the instruments and its performers, celebrate diversity, support professional development, promote the sharing of resources, and encourage teaching and learning about the instruments.
This is a monumental idea we are tasked with as we seek to move with vision into the coming years of our organization. Below are a few ideas for our growth moving forward using our mission statement as a template for the future:
Foster Bonds Among All Tuba and Euphonium Players
- As we grow as an association, we must maintain relevancy and look for ways to recruit and include new members through face-to-face interaction (conferences), our online platforms, and new forums.
- Encourage more collaboration between musicians, institutions, and ITEA worldwide.
- Look for ways to enlarge our ITEA footprint throughout the world and make a musical, and educational difference in the lives of those not as fortunate as us.
Celebrate Diversity:
- Create safe spaces for all our members to do their best work.
- Continue to pursue excellence in every area of ITEA as we embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Promote Sharing of Resources
- Look for new ways to promote awareness of the ITEA to new generations of educators and musicians globally while maintaining current growth.
- Look for more ways to share our knowledge and wealth of resources with current and potential members.
Encourage Teaching and Learning
- Continue the expansion of our presence on social media and video platforms. As our society becomes more digitally engaged it is important to maintain and increase our outreach ability to our current and potential ITEA members. Digital and social media is an excellent resource to tap into and engage low brass musicians from around the globe.
- ITEA YouTube Channel - continue to update and enhance this to include more teaching videos, member features, recordings of members and of previous conferences, including translation subtitles and/or audio for members of other countries.
- Continue the work of commissioning new works at all levels for our instruments.
Thank you for your confidence in me, and if elected, I will do my best to serve you well.
Biography
Before settling in Los Angeles, Dr. Beth Chouinard-Mitchell was principal tubist with the Women’s Philharmonic Orchestra in San Francisco. She has played with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Opera, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Opera Pacific, Germany’s Eurobrass, was a member of the World-Famous Disneyland Band, and has appeared as a guest soloist with the United States Army Band.
Locally, Dr. Mitchell enjoys an active freelance career in Los Angeles performing regularly in the Los Angeles Orchestras, the film studios, and around Southern California. Internationally, Dr. Mitchell is an acclaimed solo recital artist and clinician, regularly giving concerts, recitals, teaching lectures, masterclasses around the world, and has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Middle East.
She is the founder of the educational based performance team Music Matters Global, an organization that partners with existing music programs dedicated to bringing music training and professional concerts to disadvantaged countries.
Dr. Mitchell is a published author and has released a set of annotated etude books for tuba and euphonium entitled Advanced Etudes by Wilhelm Wurm (available on Amazon in three versions), and she has written for the ITEA Journal and several other publications. She is currently working on several projects including additional etude books and undertakings with Encore Music Publishers, long-term research projects including: a historical guide to playing the baroque serpent according to the French masters, a book on Ophicleide, and another on the music treatises and impact of Christopher Monk on early music in cooperation with Bombardon Books.
Dr. Mitchell has degrees in Tuba Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California, with an academic minor in musicology focusing on early music, and additional minors in conducting, and arts leadership. Her principal tuba teachers have been David Fedderly, Tommy Johnson, Jim Self, and Roger Bobo.
She is currently on the faculties of Azusa Pacific University and Pasadena City College where she teaches tuba, euphonium, musicology courses, brass chamber music, directs the tuba euphonium ensemble, and studio classes. Her students have gone on to be successful educators, professional performers, and into careers with the U.S. military bands and top orchestras. Dr. Mitchell is an International Performing Artist and Clinician for Eastman Winds.
Dr. Mitchell is a long-time member of the International Tuba Euphonium Association and has hosted a regional ITEA conference (2009), has adjudicated ITEA solo competitions for many years, won the Clifford Bevan Award for Excellence in Research in 2023, and serves the International Tuba Euphonium Association as a board member on the Development Committee and as the chairman of the Endowment Committee.
Chris Dickey
Statement
Dear ITEA Member,
I am deeply honored to be considered for the position of Vice President/President-Elect of ITEA. If elected, you would gain a thoughtful, devoted leader committed to working in the best interest of tuba and euphonium players around the world. When I joined ITEA in 2007, I was struck by the organization’s commitment to connecting people. ITEA’s desire to foster strong community bonds among its members continues to be important, but we can and should do more. More broadly, ITEA has the potential to serve many diverse constituents globally, including university students, artist-teachers, enthusiasts, and members of professional ensembles, to name a few. I would like to grow and expand upon this rich potential.
Throughout my career as a performer and teacher, I have developed valuable leadership skills that have guided me in a variety of roles. Whether I am teaching or in an administrative position, I value effective communication, conveying clear expectations, leading with compassion and empathy, and relying on a solution-oriented mindset for my work. I am excited at the prospect of being your Vice President/President-Elect because the role will call upon many organizational and interpersonal skills necessary to effectively lead our organization. The American diplomat, activist, and former First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” Roosevelt’s insightful words inform my approach to leadership: shared governance and accountability.
First, I believe in shared governance. Everyone in ITEA can contribute to the organization’s success. If I were in this ITEA leadership role, I would endorse a culture in which ITEA members could share their questions and concerns with administrators because they know their voices will be heard, valued, and taken seriously. Shared governance enables an organization to promote greater equality, advance partnerships, and make members feel like they are taking part in something. My second guiding principle is based on accountability. Accountability extends to everyone who engages with the organization and allows us to build and sustain relationships based on trust, mutual understanding, and respect. If I were the Vice President/President-Elect, I would uphold a system of accountability that operates in two directions: leadership to membership and membership to leadership.
In closing, I would like to develop a shared vision for ITEA, one that includes you and provides a sense of belonging that speaks to tuba and euphonium players worldwide. I would pledge an unwavering devotion to this shared vision by asking leading questions that can—and should—incite change among the ITEA membership, therefore making the organization relevant for all. I sincerely thank you for your consideration.
Biography
Chris Dickey (they/them) has led a varied career as a performer, teacher, composer, and speaker throughout the United States, South America, and Asia. Chris is currently Associate Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at Washington State University. In addition to teaching the tuba-euphonium studio, they teach LGBTQ+ music courses, conduct the Tuba Choir, and perform in the Equinox Brass Quintet. During the summer Chris is on the faculty of the Red Lodge Music Festival in Red Lodge, MT.
Chris has appeared at festivals around the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Vietnam, and China. They are principal tuba of the Washington-Idaho Symphony. An enthusiastic chamber musician, Chris is the tubist in the Mirari Brass Quintet, a professional quintet devoted to programming, commissioning, and recording new music for brass quintet. Other ensembles in which Chris performs include the In Motus Tuba Quartet and the Anonim Trio. As a Miraphone Performing Artist, Dickey frequently travels to perform and teach at universities and high schools around the United States.
A passionate and energetic teacher, Chris loves developing the next generation of educators, performers, composers, and entrepreneurs by focusing on the whole person and instilling great value in the student’s lived experiences. Members of the WSU tuba-euphonium studio have been prizewinners in regional, state, and international competitions. Students regularly compete and perform at conferences of the International Tuba-Euphonium Association, Music Teachers National Association, and the Leonard Falcone International Euphonium and Tuba Festival. Former students perform in military bands and orchestras. Graduates have obtained teaching positions in public schools and universities in the Northwest and other parts of the country. At WSU, Chris is an award-winning teacher. In 2024, they received the Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Instruction, the university’s highest teaching honor.
Chris’s creative endeavors have focused on recordings, composing, and commissioning underrepresented composers. Their commissioning efforts have resulted in approximately 25 new works featuring the tuba or euphonium. To date, Dickey’s five solo recordings have garnered critical accolades from members of the brass community. The In Motus Tuba Quartet has released two albums, In Motus and Shadows: The Music of Octubaween. The Anonim Trio’s debut album from fall 2023 features an exciting new work for horn, tuba, and piano by Catherine Likhuta. Chris’s compositions and transcriptions are available through Cimarron Music and Euphonium.com. Their solo compositions have appeared on the required literature lists for the Leonard Falcone International Euphonium and Tuba Festival and ITEC.
Service to ITEA has played a role in Chris’s career for nearly 20 years. They have written articles and new music reviews for the ITEA Journal and served on numerous ITEA committees. Chris and their students co-hosted the 2013 and 2017 Northwest Regional Tuba-Euphonium Conferences at WSU. Chris is committed to expanding the tuba and euphonium repertoire while bringing both underrepresented composers and diverse perspectives into the conversation. They encourage composers to write repertoire appropriate for student degree recitals and juries. Composers in the United States and abroad have written works for Chris, including Zachery Meier, Nicole Chamberlain, Evan Zegiel, Fernando Deddos, Juantio Becenti, brin solomon, and Katahj Copley, to name a few. Dickey enjoys mentoring aspiring music educators and performers by giving presentations on brass pedagogy, LGBTQ+ advocacy, financial literacy, and career paths in music.
Chris is the first doctoral euphonium graduate from Northwestern University. They also received degrees from the University of Iowa (MA) and Eastern Illinois University (BM). Chris’s former teachers include Rex Martin, John Manning, and Allan Horney.
