UNO Professor of Flute, Dr. Christine Beard is the solo piccoloist with Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Band (NVCB), a professional Victorian-era ensemble consisting of musicians from across the USA who perform on instruments made in the late 1800’s (not reproductions) and music composed between 1850-1895. Recorded in 2018 in Albany, NY, NVCB has released their second commercial CD in March 2021 on the MSR Classics label entitled “The Gilded Age – Late 19th Century Music for American Wind Band” which features Beard on a solo track performing August Damm’s “Through the Air” for solo piccolo and band.

A review of the CD published on October 4, 2021 by Early Music America hailed Beard’s performance of the Damm as a work that, “…gives piccoloist Christine Beard a [similar] space to shine. Beard makes deft work of the trills and mordents that churn over the band’s simple pulse. Here, too, the soloist is called upon to unleash a torrent of flourishes, and Beard tears through the arpeggios and triplet figures with fiery intensity.”

The full CD review by EMA can be read at www.earlymusicamerica.org/web-articles/cd-review-beguiling-band-music-performed-on-original-instruments/ . The Early American Brass Band Podcast has published an video interview with NVCB’s Artistic Director, Dr. Michael O’Connor at https://youtu.be/vyP7hk47qys?t=2072; more info about Newberry’s can be found online at www.facebook.com/newberryband.