Weddings, festivals, airport baggage claims and Mardi Gras balls in Philadelphia. Brasshearts Brass Band, a seven-member brass band from Louisiana’s Northshore, has played them all.
Miguel Seruntine, a computer science sophomore at LSU, runs Brasshearts behind the scenes and plays trombone and sousaphone on stage.
Seruntine was cooking chicken on the grill at his job at Chipotle when he got a phone call. The man on the other end was looking to book a brass band for a Mardi Gras themed event in Philadelphia.
The Brasshearts got the gig. The band was flown out to Philadelphia and put up in the Four Seasons Hotel. The group of teens and 20-somethings found themselves bringing a New Orleans party to Philly in full on Bacchus float-rider costumes.
“That’s like something that would happen in a movie,” Seruntine said.
Much of the Brasshearts’ story sounds like something that could be Hollywood’s next blockbuster hit.
Brasshearts Brass Band formed in 2017 when a group of high school students were putting together a band for a talent show at St. Paul’s School in Covington. The band has seen a few personnel changes since its inception, as members graduated and moved away to college, but it’s kept moving forward, even earning acceptance into the 2020 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival before COVID-19 delays.
James Plaisance, an LSU music education and jazz studies sophomore, has been playing the baritone saxophone with the Brasshearts since near the beginning.
“Individually as musicians, we’ve all just made really big leaps and advancements,” Plaisance said. “As a sound, we have been playing together for so long that it’s just second nature for us. We know what we’re going to hear, what we’re expecting to hear and it’s just that.”
But as an audience member at a Brasshearts show, you never know just what you will hear. It might be New Orleans staples like “My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now” by Dirty Dozen Brass Band or “Do Whatcha Wanna” by Rebirth Brass Band, or it could be a brass band arrangement of pop tunes from Bruno Mars or Ariana Grande.
You might hear Bell Biv DeVoe’s ‘90s hit “Poison” with a 50 Cent “In da Club” breakdown, a tradition that grew out of what Seruntine called the craziest gig the band ever booked.
A man sent the Brasshearts an inquiry, looking for a brass band to surprise his sister who was flying into New Orleans for her birthday.
Less than a day later, the Brasshearts found themselves rehearsing the man’s requested songs in a Rouse’s parking lot before driving down to Louis Armstrong International Airport to bring a high energy party to the airport baggage claim.
“I think most people were digging it because, you know, you get bored sitting in the baggage claim waiting for whatever to come out,” Seruntine said. “Most people were vibing.”
Times like that are drummer Michael Silvestri’s favorite.
“The best times when I’m playing, I’m mainly looking at the audience and trying to see what the audience is doing, how they’re reacting,” Silvestri said. “When I see the audience really engaging and enjoying it, that is huge.”
Silvestri is a freshman at Loyola University in New Orleans who one day hopes to open a custom carpentry business, a passion he’s been able to combine with music in a unique way. Silvestri has crafted several drums from scratch, including the snare drum he brings to Brasshearts’ gigs.
The Brasshearts let their unique personalities come through in their attire and sound. Every member has a certain color tie to wear to gigs. Silvestri’s is lilac purple, and he’s made his drumkit to match.
Many of the Brasshearts members come from a jazz background, with marching band experience in high school. The Brasshearts take that musical experience and incorporate it with New Orleans brass to create what Plaisance called a musical experience you won’t hear anywhere else.
Silvestri agreed that the brass music the band plays is playful and fun.
“It takes marching music, and it turns it on its head,” Silvestri said. “It’s a lot more like party music. You can definitely hear how, like, just the party scene has come in and influenced it.”
Seruntine said there’s a certain energy that New Orleans music can bring. When people come out to see a band, they expect to you to give them some of that.
“They’re expecting you to just bring some positivity to their day while they’re watching,” Seruntine said. “I definitely take seriously the band providing that to people and trying to do that whenever we’re playing.”
With an album in the works, Brasshearts has two originals “Pullin’ the Weight” and “Clock Out,” the latter of which is available on Spotify.
“I’m definitely just super proud of how far we’ve come,” Seruntine said. “From how we started, just underclassmen in high school just messing around, and then, you know, getting to the point where we are now.”
Looking forward the band hopes to finally get to perform in Jazz Fest when its rescheduled dates roll around in April of 2022.
“I want to keep going with the band as long as it can go,” Plaisance said. “Ideally, I’d like to be one of those bands that people talk about, like Rebirth Brass Band or Dirty Dozen Brass Band and people just know the name Brasshearts Brass Band. When they think of New Orleans brass music, they think of us.”
You can catch Seruntine, Plaisance and Silvestri, along with the rest of the band Collin Ledesma (trumpet), Will Green (tenor sax), Jake Lodato (trombone), and Ezra Schroeder (sousaphone, guitar) at the Red Stick Social this Saturday, Dec. 4.

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Adrian Millan

Brasshearts Brass Band