Steven Mead

Steven Mead (born 1962) is, by common consent, the euphonium’s foremost modern ambassador — the soloist most responsible for the instrument’s worldwide recognition as a virtuoso voice. An Englishman whose solo career grew out of the UK brass-band world (including a championship run with the Desford Colliery Band in the mid-1980s), he performs upward of seventy-five concerts a year with leading brass, wind, and symphonic ensembles, and has soloed with orchestras across Europe, Asia, and North America. He is described as the most-recorded euphonium artist in the world, with well over seventy CDs to his name, many issued through his own label, Bocchino Music.

He has been Professor of Euphonium at the Royal Northern College of Music since 1989 — where he was made a Fellow in 2008 — and teaches at conservatoires across Europe, including Milan. His commitment to new repertoire is enormous: he has given hundreds of world premieres, with major concerti by Philip Sparke, Martin Ellerby, Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen, Vladimir Cosma, John Reeman, and others written expressly for him. He has also served the field as an organizer, directing all six of the UK’s National Tuba Euphonium Conferences and the 2012 International Tuba Euphonium Conference.

For more than three decades Mead has been Besson’s euphonium ambassador and principal design consultant — he contributed fourteen accepted design features to the Prestige range and continues to play-test the professional line at the factory in Markneukirchen. He performs on a gold-lacquered Besson Prestige 2052. He is married to euphonium soloist Misa Mead.

Links & sources

• Official / profile ↗
• https://www.besson.com/artist/steven-mead/
• https://www.rncm.ac.uk/people/steven-mead/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Mead

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