Someone told me Tucker had some arrangements of his own not in the TubaChristmas book, not the Alec Wilder nor the Norlan Bewley charts. Maybe they’re mistaken and I was misinformed.
It’s all tuba and euphonium, it’s all good.
In my lifetime I’ve played probably close to 50 TubaChristmases at various locations, mostly up and down the eastern seaboard; I used to do three or four a year, including the big one in NYC. Would love to do that some more, perhaps in times to come.
Playing the piccolo part to “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the tuba is an old trick that originated back when Professor Bill Bell played with the Sousa Band, I do believe. (Bit of music trivia: The piccolo player in the Sousa Band during Bill Bell’s tenure: the young Meredith Wilson, who would go on to write “The Music Man” and other things. Bill and Meredith Wilson were the two youngest people in the band and hung out together and were good friends so Meredith didn’t mind losing the solo, I guess.)
I’ve played the piccolo part, taught it to other tuba players in the line, and think it’s a cool thing to do. Not meant to offend any piccolo people out there. Also played “Bugler’s Holiday” with other tuba players just for fun. You can play anything on the tuba you have a mind to.
(Don’t ask me for “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Still working on that.)
Tucker Jolly actually stopped playing for a while. He had some sort of medical problem that precluded him from being able to play.
During the Akron Tuba Christmas, he usually has a “local celebrity” come out and solo along with him in a rendition of “Jingle Bells.” The “layperson” would play the half notes (you know…“dashing through the /snow/ on a one horse open /sleigh/”) while Tucker played the quarter notes. It got big laughs from the audience to hear these local celebrities flatten out on the tuba.
It’s still part of the Akron TC schtick but for the past several years it was one of his grad students playing the main part, not Tucker. I don’t remember if he is back to playing now or not.
I also hear tell that he bikes to work with his tuba strapped to his back. He’s already sort of a funny looking guy but imagining him on a bike, strapped to a tuba, makes me smile
I disremember exactly why Tucker was sidelined for a while – was it maybe focal dystonia? That has made quite a few musicians take a break, including Warren Deck, former tubist for the New York Philharmonic; focal dystonia ended his performing career.
There’s lots of schtick around TubaChristmas; see if you can Google up Harvey Phillips doing “Santa Wants a Tuba For Christmas.”
For more stunts with tubas, see the web page for Altieri, a company that makes gig bags for all instruments but is well known for their tuba bags: Altieri musical instrument bags.
I own several Altieri bags myself but have never felt the urge to bicycle while having 35 pounds of brass strapped to my back.
There are many people who only make this gig and play nothing else all year so you are not even in the running for “worst sounding musician.”
What the “good sounding choir” mostly points to is the unfortunate propensity for some people to come to TubaChristmas and play in that blatty marching band sound; that’s absolutely what we DON’T want, people showing how ugly the sound can be. A lot of players have just now finished up with football/marching season or they’re looking forward to doing corps work and they think the way to represent is with that big loud evil sound.
It’s effective on the football field but it’s bad for TubaChristmas, where it’s supposed to be us at our sweetest, most dulcet tones.
So go, play, have fun with it, make real music. You’ll be fine. Just don’t blatt.
I dunno, man. Not to belittle Tuba Christmas but…anyone can do it. You don’t HAVE to be good. You just need to know when to not play bad.
I’m a trombone player who hasn’t played regularly for about 3 years now. I’m playing a euphonium with my trombone mouthpiece. I play the 1st baritone treble clef part (I am not used to playing as low as 2nd goes…long story).
What I do is usually toot the horn a few times the night before TC, go to the long-assed pre-performance practice (with all of the fingerings written in to my book!) and by show time, I’m good to go. My sound is fine, but some parts are just too fast for my “slide-structured” brain to function. So I sit out a measure or two. If I feel my lips need a rest, I sit out a song or half a song (very easy just to pretend to play…everyone learns this in middle school band!)
Anyway, if your local TC has 20 players, this might not be the best approach. But if you’ve got at least 50 other players around you, it’s very easy to blend in like this. I’ve got 300 other players around me so it’s no big deal. Plus, the more I go the better I am each year.
The more bodies there are, the more impressive it looks to the crowd. And, if you can play at all and not stink, it sounds great too. And, as a sousaphone player, you have a lot of cool ways you can decorate your horn to dazzle the crowd.
Just something to think about…it’s way fun to play, but also fun to watch. But if you’re a low brass player, eventually you do get the urge to want to play - you can do it!
You get symphony players and little kids at TubaChristmas . . . sitting right next to one another.
It’s four part harmony. Talent range is all over the map. The tunes are not difficult, though the further back you get in the book the more interesting they become, though mostly you’ll see the stuff in the front which is perfectly fine.
(Little side note: Most technical TubaChristmas I ever played was in Washington DC. There were about 75 people there and most of them were from the toughest service bands in the country, all based right there in DC. The sound was GLORIOUS. And we worked through the entire book, we read everything in about an hour and a half. It was GREAT!!!)
But that will probably not be your average experience . . . you’ll futz through an hour, hour and half, two hours of folks. It’ll be good. People will be happy with what you produce. You’ll dig it, it’s always fun to perform.
So go, do, have fun. And those of you that can, attend as audience members; we need you most of all!
Ok, reading this has convinced me. I know where I will be next Saturday.
I’ll be singing; it’s my boys in Virginia what play the funny brass horn thingies…
Hey, good for you, DSYoungEsq! I betcha you will soon want to join in, just to see.
At my TC, at least, the conductor does a poll of the players AND the audience to see how many years everyone has been there (“Clap if you’ve been to 10 Tuba Christmases! Clap if you’ve been to 9 Tuba Christmases!” etc) and everyone gets a big kick out of seeing who has been there how many times.
Buy a button to mark the occasion, and then every year after.
Make sure you bring some sort of jingle bells, too! (although you could use your car keys as well)
Because of this thread I watched a bunch of Tuba Christmas videos. I was amazed at the notes that could be hit with what I incorrectly thought was only a deep bass instrument.
Then I stumbled onto this amazing video. It’d just jaw-dropping. I didn’t realize it was also an instrument you could actually solo with!
But fabulous as he is (and he is incredible) the fact that he is playing fairly high notes on a bass instrument is not that big a deal. Tuba players are routinely expected to have at least three octaves to work with just in day to day playing. Of course students have less and some people don’t like playing up high (or down really low in the “pedal tones;” there’s another octave down below a lot of you don’t ever hear), so you might tend to hear more middle of the staff/just below the staff work (Bass clef staff.) But you can go higher and you can go lower and people do it all the time.
I should also point out that Oysten is playing on a tuba pitched in F . . . which by its nature sounds higher than the tubas in Bb and C you see most of us playing.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Anything you can play on a trumpet or a trombone or any other brass instrument, you can play it on a tuba. And more.
Really.
Expect more of us than oompah; we can deliver. Of course we do that too.
No…I got an invite from a mandolin-playing friend that day to come down to Kensington nad lay down a little brass bass for an “old-timey” ensemble. We had guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle, and did improv on a bunch of old Carter Family tunes and stuff from the Anthology of Folk Music.
