
By AC Spies and Theo Velasquez-Arreaga
In the chamber-like Recital Hall of Towson University’s College of Fine Arts & Communication, the sound of brass instruments echoes throughout the room during rehearsal. Senior Casimir “Cas” Campagna, 23, slowly taps his feet to the rhythm of the Pink Panther theme with Towson’s brass quintet. The song is an ode to his dad, who introduced Campagna to music through his brass quintet during Campagna’s early years when he first heard the theme.
Campagna plays the trombone, among other instruments. Wearing his fraternity’s sweater, Phi Mu Alpha, Campagna has been preparing for his upcoming senior recital. He will showcase his euphonium solo this Saturday. Attentive to his instructor’s advice and motivated by other student performers during times of burnout, Campagna has worked hard to perfect his sound to showcase it in the last big moment of his undergraduate career.
Campagna opted for the euphonium over the tuba, which he has been playing for only two years. On the tuba he would need to use more air to go in between notes, while the euphonium, a smaller and similarly shaped instrument, requires less air and gives more freedom to switch between notes.
“I just felt that I could be more expressive with less effort,” he said. “I was just having so much fun with it.”
Campagna is motivated to continue with music after graduation, but not necessarily as a performer. He hopes to one day run a musical organization and help continue the tradition of classical music.
Musical Upbringing
Campagna grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, surrounded by music. His father, Christopher Campagna, worked as a middle school band director at Newport Mill Middle School and played in his own brass quintet during Campagna’s youth.
His father would rehearse every Friday. Campagna usually fell asleep to the Pink Panther theme, which the quintet played because they knew it was his favorite. Through this, Campagna began to fall in love with music.
In the third grade, Campagna was given his first trumpet by his father, and in the sixth grade, his father asked him to be in their school’s symphonic band as a tuba player.
Campagna remembers thinking, “Cool. Fame and Fortune? Getting to be [in] the high band as a sixth grader like, never happens. I was like ‘I’m in,’” he said.
In high school, Campagna decided he would pursue a music education major. After three years of being in the major at Towson, he realized that it was not for him. He saw himself getting tired of playing the tuba and became nervous to get in the classroom as a teacher because he didn’t feel confident in his own skills.
“I’ve studied the content, I’ve passed the classes, but I don’t know if I could accurately relay that information to the kids,” he said. Another concern: uncertainty around lack of resources and being one of the only music teachers at a school.
Aside from the symphonic band, Towson had just added a second band, the wind ensemble. Campagna got placed in the symphonic band. Realizing euphonium players were needed in the symphonic band, he made the switch, auditioned for the ensemble, found that it was easier to play and re-auditioned to get into the performance.
Realizations and Re-routing of Career Plans
Campagna’s goal was to become a professional euphonium player for the U.S. military ensemble, “because that’s really the only place you can be a professional euphoniumist,” he said.
But during his final year as an undergraduate, he realized that this goal might be out of reach because it is so competitive. He said there are only 120 bands in the U.S. military, averaging about 300 jobs for a professional euphonium player in the entire country.
Campagna took a lesson with Mark Jenkins, a euphonium professor at George Mason University and main euphoniumist of the Marines President’s Own, and felt that he could improve alongside him due to his knowledge and expertise.
He was interested in GMU’s master’s performance program to increase his chances of working with the military ensemble. But with thousands of students and performers competing for the same jobs, Campagna was told by Jenkins that he could not take him in as a performance student for being too far behind compared to other euphonium students who have been playing for years
“I was like, ‘what am I playing for?,’” he said.
Through figuring out his post-graduation plans, Campagna has been dealing with the burnout that comes with being a performing student.
Finding inspiration and motivation through other student performers, Campagna attends student recitals and awes at the sheer talent of other artists in the department.
“There’s always something that someone’s better at than me,” he said, such as a bass recital he had recently been to, “it doesn’t matter that he’s not professionally employed, he is still being the best musician he can [be].”
Facing constant ebbs and flows as a musician, Campagna not only finds solace in the other departmental musicians, but also his own fraternity Phi Mu Alpha, an all-male music fraternity.
“You’ll always find someone to lean on…everyone has had those tough moments, you can almost always go to another musician… and they’re probably going to have your back and be like, ‘I’ve been there too,’” he said.
Campagna has found another music student he can lean on, Noli Jardine. “Funnily enough, me and Cas met at a performance,” Jardine said. “Me and my sister were called in to fill in some parts in a musical, and he was playing there. We didn’t talk much then, but over several times further interacting with each other at different performances, we became friends.”
Jardine and Campagna have been working together for almost five years, Jardine said. “We often give each other support with the different musical goals we are working on [to motivate each other].”
The rehearsing aspect of being a music major certainly takes a toll on students. But Campagna is determined and finds solace in other performing students who also share late rehearsing schedules when working towards perfecting their craft.
“Sometimes that’s what you got to do to break your limits and get that far,” he said.
John Manganon, Campagna’s instructor, has also been a steady fixture in his life. “I’ve been working with Cas since the beginning of the school year,” Manganon said. “Getting to see [the recital] come to fruition is always really, really fun to watch.”
Manganon said Campagna has gotten much more confident as a performer over the time they’ve worked together. “Cas has just really developed into their own style of playing, their own way of approaching music, and worked their butt off to just get to this point and be able to lay down a really, really great recital.”
Honing Skills to Further Prepare for Post-graduate Plans
As the semester has progressed, Campagna has also been able to hone his skills to determine how he can implement them in his career while still focusing on music.
“I knew I had a lot of good administrative skills and I knew I had a good amount of musical skills. So I wanted to shift away from that,” he said when he decided to pick up the performance major and a business minor.
Instead of pursuing a master’s in performance art at GMU, this fall he will instead pursue a master’s in arts administration. Campagna said that the classical music is under-appreciated and few in his generation listen to that genre. COVID-19 also made it hard for in-person attendance.
That is why he ultimately wants to work for an organization such as the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony or some musical organization where he’s able to help in the marketing or administrative side of running that organization.
“One of the things we have to push for is making classical music interesting in new ways,” he said.
Bittersweet Send-Off

Back at the Recital Hall, the lights dim down and the applause starts. It’s showtime. Campagna makes his appearance on stage. The piano next to him gleams under the spotlight. Campagna’s eggplant-colored suit creates a pop of color next to the pianist’s concert blacks.
For the next hour and a half, the audience is transported through a rollercoaster of emotions from the classical, jazz-like music being played, one of the songs having electronic elements to compliment Campagna is playing. After intermission, Campagna’s suit jacket changes to an eggplant-colored floral pattern.
One of the music pieces is more emotional for Campagna than others. This piece, Rhapsody for Euphonium, he plays with his father as a euphonium duet. Campagna had arranged it to be a duet for them.
The elder Campagna reiterates to his child that he does not judge Campagna as a performer. Every first audition and recital and performance Campagna has had he understands what it’s like as he’s been through it himself.
“And so, it was just sort of like, I guess not a [full] circle [moment] as much as just as tying a bunch of childhood musical development stuff together,” Campagna said. “It’s a line segment is what it really is, y’know there’s a beginning and there will be an end and in-between is a segment.”