The Factory Seconds Brass Trio consists of Jack Sutte, trumpet, Richard King, horn, and Rick Stout, trombone. The three are tenured members of The Cleveland Orchestra, representing over 80 years of combined service. The group was established in 2013 by Stout, Sutte and hornist Jesse McCormick and performed together in that iteration for more than 10 years. Hornist King joined the trio initially as a substitute and then as a permanent member in 2025.
As an active performing group pulled from a much larger and quite active ensemble, the group brings a distinctive voice into brass chamber music. The trio is known for its blend of sounds and technical artistry, from seamless unison playing in early music to the sometimes jagged complexities of music from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Factory Seconds Brass Trio has numerous recording credits. A Centaur release, Distant Carillons, contains music of David Loeb for trio and piano, with pianist Christina Dahl. On its own label, the trio has released four albums: peaks and valleys, lowlands, Regifted, and The Mass of Tournai. All are available on streaming platforms. A fifth album is in the works, to be titled across the pond. More geographic albums are in the planning phase – please stay tuned.
The trio has performed in settings from concert halls to warehouses: from churches to restaurants and bars. They have been presented on local and regional chamber music series and as guests at universities across the United States. The trio has twice appeared as featured soloists at Carnegie Hall, including appearing with the Interlochen Arts Academy Wind Symphony. The trio has presented master classes and residencies at music schools across the US, most recently at San Diego State, University of Wyoming, The Curtis Institute of Music, Peabody and Carnegie-Mellon.
Factory Seconds has premiered numerous works by a range of composers including David Loeb, Clint Needham, Norman Sherman, and Robert Pound. Esin Gunduz and Mattie Barbier have written pieces for electronics and the trio. Joel Love and Paul Rudy have written for FSBT, as have two of its own members, Jack Sutte and Richard Stout.
To reach a wider audience, the trio has presented family programs both in person and remotely, through its multiple original programs for parents and young children. Factory Seconds has worked with high school and junior high school students in many states, both in schools and in community-led programs, and enjoy the many opportunities we have to get to work with young brass players.
JACK SUTTE
Jack Sutte joined The Cleveland Orchestra as Second Trumpet in 1999. Prior to his Cleveland appointment, he was the principal trumpet in the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway. A native of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, Sutte attended the Curtis Institute of Music and then The Juilliard School. His teachers include Dr. Patricia Backhaus, Michael Davison, Frank Kaderabek, Raymond Mase, and Chris Gekker. Two performance highlights include the premieres of Clint Needham’s “Fractured Elements” for solo trumpet and wind ensemble, and Matthias Pintscher’s “Chute d’éoiles” for two solo trumpets performed with Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra, and Michael Sachs. A proponent of contemporary music, and a composer/arranger himself, Sutte, has released numerous CDs: Beyond the Moon, Fanfare Alone, BENT and Volumes I-IV from SonataPalooza I – METTLE. Sutte teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory. He is a Schilke Performing Artist. Information on all of Jack’s compositions and solo recordings can be found at www.jacksutte.com.
RICHARD KING
Hornist Richard King has been a member of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1988. He served as principal horn from 1997-2015 and now plays fourth horn and is the principal horn emeritus. A native of Long Island, New York, he studied with Arthur Green and attended the Juilliard School Pre College program. Later while attending the Curtis Institute of Music, he was a student of former Cleveland Orchestra principal horn Myron Bloom. Mr. King is passionate about chamber music and is a founding member of the Center City Brass Quintet, whose six recordings have been met with wide critical acclaim. In addition, he has recordings of Chamber Music for Horn and Transcriptions of Schubert Lieder both on Albany records. As a soloist, he has performed with the Tokyo Symphony, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Richmond Symphony as well as dozens of concerts with his own Cleveland Orchestra; performing the music of Mozart, Strauss, Britten, Schumann, Haydn, Chabrier and Saint-Saens. Richard has been on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1995.
RICHARD STOUT
Richard Stout joined The Cleveland Orchestra in year 2000 and performs with them as Second Trombone, Bass Trumpet and Euphonium. Prior to that time, he played with the Jacksonville Symphony as first Second and later Principal Trombone, and with the Eastern Music Festival as faculty teacher and Second Trombone. Mr. Stout studied at The Curtis Institute of Music, with Glenn Dodson. His earlier teachers were Allen Barnhill and Harold Blevins. Richard has been a guest clinician and master class teacher at festivals and universities across the United States and is on faculty at Baldwin Wallace University. In addition to his recordings with FSBT, Mr. Stout has a solo CD on Albany Records, titled Decreasing Radius. As a composer, he has written music for brass trio and trombone trio, as well as “Songs of Correspondence,” a cycle based on letters of Willa Cather. That CD is entitled as we are, on the label Bright Shiny Things, and features the Poiesis Quartet with Nancy Maultsby.