Schuchard Elementary School music teacher Tyler Schreiber poses for a photograph with some of his students.
By: Sarah Wright | Sterling Heights Sentry | Published July 18, 2025
STERLING HEIGHTS — Tyler Schreiber, a music teacher at Schuchard Elementary School, will be joining his fellow members of the Five Lakes Silver Band in the 35th annual Besson Swiss Open Competition in Switzerland.
“Tyler brings great energy and dedication to Schuchard,” Schuchard Elementary Principal Steve Slancik said in a Utica Community Schools press release. “Thanks to his hard work, our band program has never been stronger.”
The Besson Swiss Open Competition invites multiple brass bands to compete for the title of “Besson Swiss Open Champion Band” along with a chance to earn other prizes as they are evaluated by five jurors. This year’s competition will be going on in September.
“There will be 10 bands,” Schreiber said. “Each band will play two pieces in the morning, they’ll all play a set test piece … and then in the afternoon every band will play a piece that they got to choose.”
Five Lakes Silver Band, a British-style brass band based in Southfield with around 35 members, is the first band from North America to get invited to compete. The band was founded in 2006 under its previous name, the Oakland Brass Band, and was later changed to its current name in order to distinguish it from the Oakland University Brass Band. Over the years, the band has earned national honors at competitions across the country.
“We have people all over Michigan, as far north as Mount Pleasant, and there are some people living pretty far west, over in Adrian,” Schreiber said.
“So, it’s a big commitment for all 35 of us,” he said.
Schreiber plays the E flat tuba with the band, and he has been playing with the Five Lakes Silver Band for four years. He has been playing an instrument for around 15 years.
“I think part of it was a social part in the very beginning,” Schreiber said. “My friends started doing it, and when I started playing after getting to test all the instruments, I just enjoyed being able to do something I was good at, and I had really good teachers who encouraged me and gave me words of affirmation.”
Five Lakes Silver Band meets each Wednesday, which gives Schreiber an opportunity to network with other music teachers around the state who are part of the band.
“So it gives me a huge plethora of weekly conversations,” Schreiber said in a press release. “And then on top of that, playing at a musically high level allows me to understand what I need to do to accomplish it, how I achieve it, and then how to convey it to my students so that they can understand it at the basic level.”
For more information, visit fivelakessilverband.com or worldbandfestival.ch/programm/besson-swiss-open-contest.