For sixteen years, Todd Hastings has been chasing a simple idea: that the best trumpet players in the world shouldn't be something you have to fly to New York or Chicago to hear. The professor of trumpet at Pittsburg State University has built the Midwest Trumpet Festival on that premise, and the 16th edition, set for Oct. 4-5, 2026, may be the clearest expression of it yet.
The headliner is Charlie Porter, a Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter whose career has spanned more than two decades on the international jazz scene. He'll perform a concert at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4 in McCray Hall, the home of the university's music department and its Sharon Kay Dean Recital Hall. The concert is free and open to the public. Sharing the bill across the two days is The Sons of Brasil, Kansas City's premier Brazilian jazz ensemble, who take the stage at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts. Their concert is also free.
The festival's origin story is modest, almost accidental. In 2009, a student named Will Koehler approached Hastings about organizing a trumpet festival after seeing one at another school. Hastings agreed, and the first event featured his own professional jazz band as the guest performance. For the first few years, the guests were mostly friends of Hastings — fellow trumpet players stopping by to share their music while visiting. That informal arrangement gradually gave way to something more ambitious: fundraising and an endowment drive that allowed the festival to bring in major artists every year.
"I've tried to bring in guest artists that are not easily heard in the Midwest," Hastings told the university's news service. "I wanted to bring in people that were big names that were not accessible."
That guiding philosophy has drawn an impressive roster over the years. Past festivals have featured Wayne Bergeron, Jens Lindemann, Joe Burgstaller, Byron Stripling, and many more acclaimed artists. The 2012 edition, the fourth annual, was typical of the festival's early ambition: guest artists included Byron Stripling, artistic director of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, and Ryan Anthony, then principal trumpet of the Dallas Symphony. Hastings opened the ceremonies by welcoming attendees, followed by the Pittsburg State University Trumpet Ensemble performing Gordon Jacob's "Canterbury Flourish." Stripling then gave a master class to an audience that ranged from beginners to professionals, stressing the fundamentals of trumpet playing.
What distinguishes the festival from a typical concert series is its structure. It is not merely a pair of performances but an intensive two days of large and small continuing education sessions, master classes, recitals, and collaborative concerts. Participants register from high schools and universities across the Four State Area — the region where Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas meet. They learn directly from the guest artists, prepare for performances, and play alongside faculty and fellow students. The festival's stated mission is to gather leading performers, educators, students, and the community, and to bring together the community of professional trumpet pedagogues and performers from across the Midwest.
The venue for most of the festival is the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts, designed and constructed by world-renowned theater architects. For a university of roughly 5,500 students in southeast Kansas, it is an unlikely cultural anchor — and it has allowed the festival to grow into an event that draws participants from well beyond the immediate region.
This year's headliner brings a genuinely international resume. Charlie Porter was born in Boynton Beach, Florida, and studied at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts before earning degrees from The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music in both jazz and classical performance. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Paris Conservatory. Among his distinctions, he was the first trumpeter to win first place in both the classical and jazz divisions of the National Trumpet Competition. His mentors include Wynton Marsalis.
Porter's Grammy came from an unexpected direction: his collaboration on opera star Joyce DiDonato's crossover album "Songplay," which won Best Classical Vocal Solo Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020. He has released six albums as a leader, including "Immigration Nation," named one of DownBeat's Best Albums of the Year. He has performed with Joe Zawinul, Paquito D'Rivera, Orrin Evans, Kenny Washington, and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars, and he is a recipient of commissions from the Doris Duke Foundation and Chamber Music America. He is currently professor of trumpet at New York University, and his upcoming seventh album, "Sci-Fi Standards, Vol. 1: The Future We Knew," continues his run of concept-driven projects. Porter draws on his Lebanese, Greek, Italian, and British heritage, bringing what the university describes as a global perspective to music that blends tradition, innovation, and storytelling.
The Sons of Brasil offer a different kind of global perspective, one rooted much closer to home. The group was founded in 1991 by trumpeter and flugelhornist Stan Kessler, a major figure on the Kansas City jazz scene for many years. What sets the band apart is a remarkable run of consistency: it has performed every week since its inception, a residency that has made it a fixture of Kansas City's jazz calendar. The current lineup includes Kessler on trumpet and flugelhorn, Danny Embrey on guitar, Greg Whitfield on electric bass, Doug Auwarter on drums, Gary Helm on percussion, and Roger Wilder on keyboards.
The individual resumes are as deep as the group's history. Embrey played for seven years with Sergio Mendes, the Brazilian musician who helped bring bossa nova to American audiences. Auwarter, described by the band as its "Brazilian heartbeat," learned Portuguese and began annual pilgrimages to Rio de Janeiro to play with musicians there. Whitfield is a scholar of contemporary Brazilian music across samba, MPB, bossa nova, and partido alto. Helm is known regionally for his instinct for rhythm across Cuban, Brazilian, Jamaican, and Caribbean styles. Wilder, a native of Rochester, New York, has played with Stanley Turrentine, Randy Brecker, Adam Nussbaum, and Chris Potter. Kessler himself was voted "outstanding overall musician" by JAM magazine, the publication of the Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors.
The pairing of Porter and The Sons of Brasil is a natural one for a festival that has always leaned on the trumpet's versatility. Porter moves between jazz and classical worlds with ease; Kessler's band spans bossa nova, samba, choro, and contemporary Brazilian jazz. Both concerts are free, a deliberate choice that reflects the festival's community-facing mission. For Hastings, who has spent his career in the Midwest, the point has never been exclusivity. It has been access — bringing the kind of musicians his students would otherwise have to travel to hear, and then letting everyone in the door.
Registration for the festival is open at pittstate.edu/music/midwest-trumpet-festival.html. The festival runs Oct. 4-5, with Porter's concert at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4 in McCray Hall and The Sons of Brasil at 4 p.m. Oct. 5 at the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts.