Meet Dorival Puccini | Musician and Founder of Axiom Brass, Founder and Chief Editor of Brass Legacy

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dorival Puccini and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dorival, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
From the education system to the way our profession as classical musicians is set, most of us are trained and told to aspire to have an orchestra Job. As much as I love the entire orchestral experience, I often felt that my artistic voice was considerably limited as one of so many musicians in an orchestra (the conductor does have the final saying, and the artistic department decides what is being performed etc) but chamber music provides so much freedom to explore your own artistic vision, allowing the artist to find relevancy for his own art form with in our society. After a few years of orchestra playing, it was clear to me that I needed to have more control over my artistic voice. Chamber Music was the right if not the only choice.

Please tell us more about your art. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
I am trained as a trumpeter, with degrees from Grand Valley State University in MI (Bachelor of Musical Arts) The Juilliard School in NY (Master of Musical Arts) and Michigan State University (Doctor of Musical Arts). But my musical journey began much earlier, in São Paulo, Brazil, where I was born and raised until moving to the US to get my degrees. My dad was a band director so I grew up around music and it was always present in my life. My first sounds on the trumpet were when I was about 4 years old. While my friends in high school were trying to figure out what they wanted to do, I knew I was going to be a musician. Even in middle school as my friends had no clue of what they would be doing, I already knew with conviction that my future would always be attached to classical music. But such conviction did come with a price too. While everyone would go play outside after school was done, I had to go to the after school conservatory program which I started around the time I was 9 or 10 years old. This meant having my “play” time filled with trumpet practice, music lessons, ensemble rehearsals, and homework for both my regular education and my musical education. Weekends weren’t much different as the school band often travelled to play concerts as well.

My family couldn’t afford to send me to the USA to study, but I had decided pretty early on that moving to the US was an integral part of achieving my goals as an artist, so I had to figure out a way to do so without counting on any financial support for my family. Luckily I was able to get generous merit based scholarships throughout out my education otherwise none of this would have been possible. But it also meant being away from family and rarely ever visiting since travel to Brazil was beyond my financial means.

I spent many year teaching in college as well, since I am very passionate about helping the next generations of artists, but unfortunately, the University system and my vision for touring with Axiom are not quite compatible, and at times, one would distract the other far too much. I need to feel like I am fully committed to something, so wherever I could not invest all my energy in one or the other, a grew extremely frustrated, so Axiom prevailed and here I am still 16 years later, more committed than ever.

To me Axiom Brass is the perfect outlet for my artistic vision. It is crucial to me that what I am creating is relevant to my community, to society in general, and to the future of our art form. A chamber music group is small enough (there is only 5 of us on stage most of the time) that it can be flexible, and can adapt to what is next very easily. When we started, the goal was to establish our name, so we did every competition we could. We won many, but probably lost many more, and with the dangerous of sounding a bit cliche, I have to admit, winning was fun, but loosing was often the most rewarding in the long run since it pushed us to be better. As we began touring, our goal was to present original music for Brass to our audiences, or as we refer to, “Brass Chamber Art Music”. That’s is not something many people are familiar with, which we took as being a fun challenge. It would have been much easier to just follow the same path others in my area were taking and program music to cater to what the audience wanted instead of presenting something new to the audience. But like I said, the challenge was part of the fun. Still, it seemed that even while we were presenting something unknown, it was not always perceived as relevant. So we started focusing more and more on presenting the music of living composers. We call it “living music” music that is a direct reaction to what we are all experiencing every day, the events, the culture, the politics, the changes in our planet, etc. Which brought us to the next step, collaborating with scientists to covey scientific data about human kind, our planet, and the universe, through music. At one of our recent science collaborations, a scientists in the audience told us that the concert was “the best presentation of science she had ever seen.” That was one of the best complements we could hope for while seeking to be relevant.

Nevertheless, our music is not all pretty melodies and cozy harmonies, so if someone is looking to be relaxing at one of our concerts, they might be in for a surprise. But to us, our job is not to make you feel good, or relaxed, or peaceful. To us, the goal is to make you feel, no matter what emotion it is, as long as you feel, we did our job. If someone tells us, they hated something, that is just as good as loving something, both are extreme emotions. I just hope no one ever feels, indifferent about what we present. I think that would qualify as a failure.

That’s axiom, we are always trying to make sure our art is relevant, innovative, refined, with an intimate feeling, and a good amount of humor and wit.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I am a huge fan of first impressions (that’s actually the name of one of our albums) – I think it is comfortable and assuring to do the same things over and over, but the biggest thrills usually comes from when we discover something new. We are a lot less likely to remember the 15th time we ate somewhere, then we are to remember the first time, even if the food or service or environment was terrible. Actually, those unfortunate experiences can often be the ones that creates some of the most fun memories. So, my ideal week in town would be exploring, from concerts, shows, and plays, to restaurants, sight seeings, museums, and anything else we can discover together.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to dedicate this shoutout to my wife Rachelle, my daughter Valentina, and my colleagues in Axiom Brass, Kevin, Corey, Abbey, and Chris.

Website: axiombrass.com

Instagram: @axiom_brass

Facebook: www.facebook.com/axiombrass

Youtube: www.youtube.com/axiombrass

Other: tiktok – @axiom_brass

Image Credits
1. X 2. Dario Acosta Photography 3. X 4. X 5. X 6. X 7. X 8. X