READING, Pa. – Thursday celebrates International Jazz Day, and in Berks County, that marks the end of Jazz Fest. To wrap up the festival, an Allentown native performed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I found a trumpet in my mom’s closet when I was 8, picked it up, put it up to my face, and made a sound. And that’s not an easy thing,\u201d said Rick Braun, an award-winning trumpeter, composer and producer.<\/p>\n
Since then, Braun has released acclaimed albums and played amongst the finest. Now, he finds himself back in the region.<\/p>\n
“Go figure. Little Reading, Pennsylvania, and people come from all over the world to attend the Berks Jazz Festival,\u201d Braun said.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s events wrapped up the festival.<\/p>\n
“I’m absolutely honored that I’m the one who’s closing out this whole month of 51 performances. That’s something special,\u201d Braun said.<\/p>\n
And for a former high school band, the performance was also a reunion.<\/p>\n
“The minute we heard that Rick was going to be here for the 35th anniversary \u2014 got on the phone right away, made reservations, and we have 24 alumni coming out,\u201d said Kay Kurtz, president of the Dieruff High School Alumni Association.<\/p>\n
Though years have passed, the band members’ love for music still runs deep.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to be determined as can be, and you’ve got to be willing to just put in hours and hours and hours of practice,\u201d Braun said. \u201cAnd I jokingly say, half-jokingly say to people, \u2018If you can do anything else, do it, because it’s not an easy road.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – Thursday celebrates International Jazz Day, and in Berks County, that marks the end of Jazz…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[119,43450,10206,80721,7420,128,130,129,62784,80719,80720],"class_list":["post-180887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-allentown","tag-berks-jazz-fest","tag-dieruff-high-school","tag-international-jazz-day","tag-jazz","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-pennsylvania","tag-rick-braun","tag-trumpet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}