In the winter of 1997, Rick Rueckert had received free concert tickets to see something that would change his musical goals forever. The United States Army Brass Band gave a concert in the nearby city of Redwing Minnesota in front of an auditorium full of people. It was truly the most remarkable concert he had ever seen. This planted the seed in his mind to maybe someday startup his own brass band.

   It wasn't, however, until a year later when he saw the Sheldon Theater Brass Band perform a Christmas concert that he finally decided to get things rolling. So in the winter of 1998 he started gathering enough musician friends to make a 30 piece brass band which was soon to be called Brio Brass. But was it really a brass band? It didn't have the traditional instrumentation of a brass band...not with Bb trumpets and mellophones and baritones in G.

   Well it didn't matter much because Rick had decided to take his group in a non-traditional direction anyway. Instead of focusing on traditional brass band music he instead decided to play jazz. Lots of it! But where do you find jazz charts for a brass band? Well, you don't...so Rick decided to put his 20 plus years of arranging experience to good use. Within 4 months he had written enough music to fill an hour and a half show and on May 5th, 1999, Brio brass had it's first performance in front a lively crowd at Minnehaha Falls Park in Minneapolis MN. It was a huge success!!!