Music was very common at all social occasions in ancient Rome, public and private. Sacrifices and religious ceremonies, plays and the theater, sports, the circus and the arena, funerals, fancy private dinners.

There were brass and stringed instruments, woodwinds, percussion instruments, singers and choirs.

To add on that, if I may; where there particularly famous performers, either individuals or groups (like "the choir of xyz"), or maybe even composers?

Did the instrumental music consist of fully composed pieces, or was there a larger degree of improvisation?

Ancient Roman music and musical instruments are less well documented than Ancient Greek, but it appears that, just like today, music could be played at any events and contexts you can think of. And for various functions:

• Poems were rarely recited without being sung, or having a musical accompaniment.

• Musicians with brass instruments, that resemble early tubas and trumpets are depicted in mosaics etc., accompanying magistrates. Attesting to their function as some sort of status symbol. This is further supported by findings of these instruments in graves of some wealthy citizens.

• The same instruments have also been depicted as being at the lead of parades.

• The "tuba" (in Latin, a straight, trumpet-like instrument), "bucina" and "cornu" were used to signal orders. And groups consisting of "cornicines" and "tubicines" were used, from at least the 1st century onwards, to accompany gladiatorial events.

• Music would also be used in theatre as was the case in musical pantomimes, which can be thought of a single-act operas, in a way. Complete with flutes, "brass" instruments, and a chorus.

  Alexandrescu, Cristina-Georgeta (2007). The Iconography of Wind Instruments in Ancient Rome: Cornu, Bucina, Tuba, and Lituus. Music in Art, Vol. 32, No. 1/2, Music in Art: Iconography as a Source for Music History Volume III (Spring–Fall 2007), pp. 33-46.