SOUTH HADLEY — The sound from the high school’s music room Tuesday morning echoed down the halls with more volume than usual.

South Hadley High School’s concert band currently consists of 12 people, three of whom play trumpet. Nathan Manly is one of two clarinet players in the five-person woodwind section, and normally he can hear himself play within the small band.

But when 20 members from the semi-professional Bombyx Brass Collective filed into the bandroom to play with the high school musicians, the amount of sound that filled the small music room took Manly by surprise.

“You have to try a lot harder if you actually want to be heard,” he said. “And then there’s so little woodwinds, it’s incredibly quiet, you can barely even hear us.”

Bombyx Brass Collective, named after the group’s home venue Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity, is a 30-person semiprofessional brass and percussion band consisting of musicians and active or retired music teachers. In addition to their own concerts, the band offers its expertise to middle and high schools in western Massachusetts, visiting classrooms to mentor student musicians one-on-one and setting an example of high-level musicianship.

The ensemble visited South Hadley High to host a master class and practice with the high school students for a benefit concert later that night. Besides raising money for the district’s music program, the students got the chance to play in a larger band.

“The music program has a legacy of excellence and major participation. Right now, things have ebbed quite a bit,” Bombyx Brass Collective co-founder and French horn player Ira Brezinski said. “But the kids who are in the program and the instructors are really top-notch. We want to do just a little bit to help to bring this program back and add numbers to it.”

The class period started with a brief introduction and performance by the Bombyx band before the two ensembles mixed together. Bombyx Music Director Margaret Reidy then conducted an upbeat piece for the concert called “Invicia,” occasionally stopping to give notes on dynamics, articulation and tempo. However, it took only 30 minutes of practice before Reidy said the piece was “performance ready.”

“The challenge here today was kind of not knowing the level of play of the South Hadley students and combining them with the adults, but it went very well because the high school students are extremely well prepared,” Reidy said.

Reidy, a retired high school music teacher, noticed the students adapted to her recommendations quickly. However, student flute player Amelia Balsko said the class had been working on dynamics and articulation — which Reidy stressed during the visit — already.

Despite her experience in larger bands, including the High School Honor Band and the Massachusetts Music Education Association Western District Ensemble, Balsko rarely gets the chance to sit in with bigger groups. As the only flute player in the room, she spent most of the master class listening to other parts, which she said was a lot easier because there were more people and a bigger sound.

The class then split into five groups based on instruments to give students a chance to ask closer questions on technique, musical experience and tips. South Hadley High School Music Director Beth Ann Curtis said as a vocalist and woodwind player, she doesn’t have the knowledge to help her brass students as much as she’d like.

When the Bombyx group offered to visit the school, she was excited to give her brass players some mentorship.

“Most of (the students) don’t take private lessons, so this is an opportunity for them to talk to people who know more than them and ask questions and get answers,” she said.

Curtis added that most of her students won’t play in a larger ensemble unless they’re invited to play in a regional ensemble, so the students don’t often get to practice listening and blending in with other instruments in a band over twice the size of their concert band.

“The biggest thing is that my students are a small ensemble, and they don’t get to hear what it sounds like to be in the larger ensemble,” Curtis said. “So knowing if you’re a woodwind, how do you balance in with the brass? If you’re a brass player, how do you balance overall within the brass, and then within the brass to the woodwinds to the percussion. When we do it with 15 people, it’s very different than when you do it with 35.”

After the high school’s practice, Bombyx also visited Michael E. Smith Middle School to work on a piece with middle school musicians. A year after Bombyx Brass Collective formed in January 2022, the band began to work with schools to secure local cultural council grants for these classroom visits. Bombyx has gone to high schools in Wilbraham and Sturbridge, and will work with students in Northampton later this spring.

“I’m hoping that they can recognize that playing your instruments can be a lifelong endeavor. They see the Bombyx group, that they’re not all just music teachers, that there are other people from other professions, but they’ve continued to find outlets to play their music,” Reidy said.

Emilee Klien can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.