I am thrilled to announce Paige’s Music’s fourth annual Tuba & Euphonium Day on Saturday, April 26, 2025.

This year, we’re partnering with Eastman, Willson, S.E. Shires Co., and Yamaha to bring you a full day celebrating all things low brass, and welcome two world-class guest artists: Dr. Amy Schumaker Bliss and Indy’s own Anthony Kniffen!

TUBA/EUPHONIUM DAY

This year’s Tuba & Euphonium Day will have the largest variety of instruments we’ve ever had! Throughout the day, we will have an array of instruments and mouthpieces available to test and purchase. You can also sign up to get one-on-one instrument feedback with our guest artists, followed by a performance/clinic.

Here is the day’s schedule for Tuba & Euphonium Day 2025:

• 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM – Instrument/mouthpiece fittings & testing – Eastman/Yamaha Tubas, Willson/Shires/Yamaha euphoniums | 30-minute appointments with Amy Schumaker Bliss and Anthony Kniffen. If you are interested in trying out tubas or euphoniums that day, you may make an instrument testing appointment by clicking here. Appointment slots are limited, so don’t wait!

• 2:00 to 4:00 PM – Clinic with our two guests
• 4:00 to 5:00 PM – Meet & greet, plus more instrument testing/browsing

Our guest artists’ unique expertise will make for a wonderful, informative clinic that can even apply to all wind instrumentalists beyond just the tuba and euphonium. And you’ll hear some world-class playing as well!

All in all, this year’s Tuba & Euphonium Day is shaping up to be our biggest low brass event ever, and I couldn’t be more excited!

If you would like to attend the 2pm clinic, please register on the event page.

 About Dr. Amy Schumaker Bliss

Dr. Amy Schumaker Bliss has built a career that combines her love for performing, teaching music, and writing. As a performer, Amy is always busy creating new projects. She released her album Couleurs en Mouvements in 2019 and she is featured on two of Atlantic Brass Band’s albums (The Spirit of Christmas and Metropolis). She has been a featured soloist with Atlantic Brass Band, Rowan University’s wind band, Rowan University’s wind ensemble, Kent State University’s wind ensemble, Athena Brass Band, Lancaster Allegro Symphony, Dublin Silver Brass Band, and San Francisco Brass Band. She was a featured artist and host at the International Women’s Brass Conference (IWBC) at Rowan University (2017) and a recitalist at the IWBC in Mito, Japan in 2024. As an adjudicator, Amy has served on panels for the North American Brass Band Association (youth section), Falcone Euphonium Young Artist Competition, The International Tuba Euphonium Association (ITEA) Young Artist Tuba and Euphonium Competition, both the Midwestern and Southern regional ITEA artist euphonium competitions, and the IWBC’s Susan Slaughter Euphonium Competition. She has also adjudicated composition competitions for ITEA and IWBC. She regularly plays solo euphonium in Dublin Silver Band just north of Columbus, Ohio and Athena Brass Band, an all-star British Brass Band featuring women brass and percussion players from around the world.

As a teacher, Amy has worked with about 20 universities for low brass masterclasses in person and online in the United States and around the world. Amy frequently works with brass bands as a clinician and educator as well. She has an international studio of in-person and online students on baritone, euphonium, trombone, tuba, and music theory. Amy conducts the Dublin Youth Brass Band, an ensemble that runs a summer session, fall workshop, and full winter/spring term. The youth brass band will be competing at the Dublin Festival of Brass and the North American Brass Band Championships for the first time in 2024 and the kids are collaborating on a season-long cultural exchange with two youth brass bands in Uganda (Brass for Children and Mbale Hills Youth Brass Band).

Amy’s most recent publications include two works about British brass bands: a children’s book called “Amy’s Brass Band”, and a paper on the history of the British brass band movement in North America. The paper, “The Brass Band Bridge and J. Perry Watson: A Link to the Beginning of the North American British Brass Band Movement,” was published in the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) Journal and was praised as being “probably the best history of the establishment of the British-brass band movement in North America” (William Berz, editor WASBE Journal). The children’s book, “Amy’s Brass Band,” is surpassing all expectations of popularity and introducing the genre to a whole new generation of future musicians. “Amy’s Brass Band” is available worldwide through Amazon, and in the US through Walmart and Target online.

Amy attended Capital University Conservatory of Music in Columbus where she double majored in euphonium performance and music education, studying with Dr. Tom Zugger.  She earned her master’s degree in euphonium performance studying with Steven Mead and David Thornton at the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, England) where she earned Honors with Distinction in Performance. In 2015, she graduated from Rutgers University as the school’s first doctoral euphonium student, studying with Dr. Stephen Arthur Allen and mentored by Aaron VanderWeele. Amy lives just outside of Columbus, Ohio with her husband Adam and two sons.

About Anthony Kniffen

Anthony Kniffen’s first professional orchestral experience, at age 18, was as acting Principal Tuba in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a concert under Sir Georg Solti. A year later he joined the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra for eight seasons, and was appointed Principal Tuba of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1997. His teachers have included Daniel Perantoni and Harvey Phillips, both at Indiana University, Gene Pokorny and Arnold Jacobs of the Chicago Symphony, Robert Tucci, of the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and Floyd Cooley, of the San Francisco Symphony.

Playing along with such diverse groups as folk artists The Makaha Sons of Ni’ihau in Hawaii to the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra here in Indianapolis, Mr. Kniffen has also performed with the Saint Louis, Minnesota, Detroit and New Mexico symphony orchestras and recorded numerous discs with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In the ’90s, he toured the U.S. extensively with Summit Brass (“America’s Large Brass Ensemble”) and Japan with Sierra Brass. A winner of four concerto competitions, other solo appearances include regional and international tuba conferences and colleges, including his alma mater, Indiana University. A highlight of Mr. Kniffen’s career was performing the John Williams Tuba Concerto on an ISO Classical Series Concert under the baton of Mario Venzago in 2008.

Mr. Kniffen is the ‘play-along’ tuba player on a Hal Leonard educational project called, “Essential Elements 2000,” and can also be heard on a tribute CD to jazz legend David Baker, “Basically Baker,” and, most notably on “CSO Resound: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass Section Live.”

His teaching career began at the University of Hawai’i and continued here at the University of Indianapolis, before joining Butler University. A great honor has been to fill in for sabbaticals at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and several times for his mentor, Dan Peranatoni at IU, and for a semester at Ball State. In 2015, he traveled to Hokkaido, Japan for their prestigious annual euphonium/tuba workshop.

He is devoted to his lovely wife, ISO violist Amy Kniffen, their children, and their church, and is proud of having completely remodeled their master bathroom without injury, mostly by himself learning from YouTube videos.