SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Over 30 years, Syracuse trumpeter Jeff Stockham has amassed one of the oldest, most impressive brass instrument collections in the Northeast. It's as much a collection as it is ...

All you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself. The oldest brass instruments are found preserved in bogs all over Scandinavia and date back to c500BC.

But old brass instruments of comparable pedigrees don’t enjoy such hagiographies, outside a niche set of brass enthusiasts. Their repair needs can be esoteric, their intonation spotty ...

It remains one of England's oldest brass bands, surviving two world wars, depression, a deadly 1976 fire which burned its bandroom and instruments to dust, and the outbreak of Covid-19.