Mouthpieces 2012 - The Volare

The past few months have seen an impressive introduction of new mouthpieces endorsed by highly respected artists. Most of these great players, who already have their own personalized ‘signature’ mouthpieces available on the market, continue experimenting to develop something still better. Of course, this is a good thing, it is a perfect example of how our equipment is evolving and always improving.

Ironically, this also presents a problem. For example, if there are ten new great mouthpieces available on the market, indorsed by highly respected players, what is the best way for a tubist to find and test these mouthpieces; buying ten new mouthpieces on the contingency that one might be the ‘right one’ isn’t an option. Mouthpieces are expensive! Personally, not being a business man and having no marketing experience, I can see only four possibilities: advertising, sending samples to a few strategic players, sending examples to a few music shops but finally and most expediently depending on ‘word of mouth’ to reach the members of our unique community.

Once, a very long time ago, I decided to sell tubas. Short summary: I didn’t like it, I was not good at it, and it made me unhappy; I will not do it again. We have people that are good at it and who enjoy that aspect of the music business.
Why do I mention this? Very soon there will be a new mouthpiece, yet another new mouthpiece, with my name on it, it’s called The Volare. Having taken part in it’s development, having played and compared it with many other mouthpieces and having listened to many players playing it, I can say the results are all positive and impressive; The Volare has a focused, clear, and centered tone, the sound it produces very warm, dynamic response very efficient and sensitive, plus intonation is beautifully delineated yet flexible.

I promise this will be the end of my try at salesmanship; I’ll leave that to the businessmen and the promoters. Please watch for this new mouthpiece, The Volare, and audition it when you get the chance.

And the tuba evolution continues.

Roger Bobo

Tokyo, June 10, 2012

Life with the tuba

This is April 2012, and it’s been 67 years since I started playing brass instruments. The first five years, since I was 7, was playing the cornet, and then in 1950 I moved up to the tuba.

From my present position in the world, I try to keep a view toward the future; it’s a philosophy of mine and I think it’s a good philosophy. However, I’m sure the 67 years of retrospective provide a strong foundation, which allows me to proceed into the future with greater vision.

It must have been 1943 on that cold Christmas time Sunday morning when, while sitting on my father’s shoulders, that I first heard the sound of brass instruments ringing from that church tower in Los Angeles. It rang like magical bells, I had never heard anything like it before and I can remember it perfectly even to this day. I’m absolutely sure that morning was a defining moment in my life.

Another formative sonic memory came several years later while I was singing in the boy’s choir of that same church. After the Saturday morning choir rehearsals I would usually escape and hide in the church’s organ pipe room while the organist was practicing. That was another magical experience, but it was also a powerful acoustical experience. Those pipes were not designed to be heard from only a few meters away in a closed room; the low notes of the huge diapason pipes were so intense they tickled my eardrums. Since that time I’ve always loved to hear powerful low frequency sounds like the ‘hiding in the pipe room’ days.

I really didn’t love playing the cornet but I could play a little and I knew several melodies. I wanted to continue with music when I finished elementary school but not on cornet. During an outing with some of the musically talented kids from my school, we went to visit the band room of our local high school. Of course, we were told not to touch anything bit it was love at first sight when I saw a Sousaphone coiled in the back of the room. Without thinking I found myself seated and enveloped by the big brass beast. Before I could be stopped I was playing the same melodies I knew on cornet. It was easy; it worked exactly like the cornet but two octaves lower. It felt good, the sound was rich and mellow and I had attracted a crowd of kids and teachers. Of course, when I had finished I got in trouble but that only made the tuba more attractive, it was the forbidden fruit syndrome!

From that time on I was hooked, always vacillating between dedication, obsession and sometimes fanaticism. In the world today there are many kids and young people who hold that same kind of tuba passion I had in the 50s, but at that time I was pretty much alone. When people learned my goal in life was to become a tubist, they were a little uncomfortable and soon that made me uncomfortable too. That never changed my will to become a tubist but it did cause me sometimes to feel that the tuba was my cross to bear or sometimes I thought of it as the heavy stone that Sisyphus had strapped to his back for eternity

I felt that image so strongly that I later commissioned composer John Stevens to write a solo piece for tuba called THE LIBERATION OF SISYPHUS, which has now become a major work in the solo tuba repertoire. I have never counted the number of works for tuba that I have commissioned, requested or had dedicated to me but I’m sure it’s in the hundreds; I’m very proud of that.

As time passed, my tuba playing was developing in two ways, as a soloist and as a symphony orchestra player. Through my high school days I played in many community orchestras, all-city and all-state high school orchestras, and in what was called the National High School Orchestra at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. The symphony orchestra had completely become the center of my social life, and in that setting were all my friends

After graduating from high school in 1956 I went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. During the first week at Eastman I auditioned and was accepted into the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. I was not ready for this remarkable opportunity but in those days there were only two players auditioning, astonishing when we see the realities of today when frequently there are over one hundred applicants for an orchestra position.

While at Eastman my student colleagues and I would frequently listen to recorded performances from orchestras all over the world and tried to guess which orchestra and from which country we were listening to. It wasn’t so difficult then, especially international styles were easy to discriminate. When I first heard the Chicago Symphony brass section in the 1950s I thought it was the most wonderful brass playing I had ever heard; I still think that was the best brass section of all time, and still those players remain my brass player icons.

I have to mention that in 1957 I was privileged to play second tuba to William Bell in the New York Philharmonic when they passed through Rochester on tour. I was 19 and excited beyond belief. I worked hard for a career playing tuba, but there was another thing working in my favor; extraordinary good luck and it seems to still be happening!

In 1962 I played a recital in Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City. It was New York’s first ever tuba recital and I was lucky enough to receive very good reviews. This recital turned out to be the most significant thing I had done and the following publicity was amazing and a little unsettling. Today I wish I had followed that direction of being a soloist more intensely but the orchestra was very fulfilling for me and it offered security that I wasn't able to envision as a soloist.

My curiosity concerning nationalistic musical styles led me to write 20 letters to various orchestras in Europe inquiring about possible tuba openings. Two of these orchestras had openings! (It was that embarrassment of extraordinary good luck again). The Suisse Romand Orchestra of Geneva, Switzerland and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Holland both had tuba openings. To make a long story short, I auditioned for both of them, was offered both jobs, and I chose the Concertgebouw. After two years playing in the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam I returned to my home city of Los Angeles and played in the Philharmonic there for the next 25 years.

Shortly after I started playing the tuba in 1950 my sisters gave me a recording of Tubby The Tuba. Of course, I was too old for that story by that time but because of my love for the tuba I was fascinated by the story, plus there was superb tuba playing on the recording I had. Many times subsequently I humorously have thought that I was actually becoming the personification of Tubby, the need to play a solo, the need to be heard and even, as Tubby experienced, the occasional ridicule by my peers. My own sense of humor has saved me from taking that rejection too seriously but that same humor was not strong enough to spare me the frustration of certain chronic episodes: often, conductors, mostly German or Russian and most of whom I admired, would sometimes speak ‘baby talk’ to the tubist: “…and now the great big tuba becomes the great big bear” or “Tuba, you need to be a very scary dragon”. However, I never showed my anger.

There were only a very few such negatives. Through the years I would very occasionally encounter a student who didn’t like my ideas and thought he knew more about how a tuba should sound than I did. They have all disappeared from the tuba world!

I had to develop tact, humor, kindness and especially perseverance in training stage crew and tour managers who thought I was just purposely harassing them because I would usually need two or more tubas with me on stage or on tour.

I developed a pathological fear of checking in at airports with tubas because of rules that were never the same from flight to flight.

The existence of conservative shortsighted tubists, regarding their relatively new instrument in the musical world with relatively little history, has always amazed me.

This always-present factor of good luck was at its strongest when it came to my teachers through the years, I was extremely fortunate to have superb and inspirational teachers. They taught me to love playing. As much as I loved playing I was surprised to find that after I stopped playing, I grew to love teaching even more. I have found that the every student is unique and requires unique treatment; I needed to use my brain more than I did as an orchestra player. After 25 years in the Los Angeles Philharmonic I took a one-year sabbatical and went to Italy; I never returned the Los Angeles Philharmonic!

I held several teaching positions while living in Europe: Fiesole Scuola di Musica, Italy, Conservitoire de Lausanne, Switzerland, Conservatory of Bern, Switzerland, Rotterdam Conservatory, Holland and the Royal Northern Collage of Music, Manchester, England. For three years I held all these positions simultaneously. During that three-year period I was also making frequent trips to Spain, Greece and Canada. It was very tiring but I still enjoyed it. Now the good luck still abounds with a full time faculty position with the Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo, Japan, one of the world’s great music schools. I expect to continue my work there as long as my body stays strong and my mind stays clear. It’s a very personal thing but having lived many places in the world, Japan stands as my first choice.

I have also been lucky in the number of students I’ve taught who are now making a good living playing or teaching. I have started to make a list of my working students several times but it’s proven to be difficult. Where do we draw the line? There are students who have studied four years in a conservatory situation, those who have studied for a year, a few weeks in a summer masterclass, those who have had only a few lessons and even those who have taken only one lesson. Can I call them all my students? In any case, teaching has become the most satisfying aspect of my musical life.

The students today have entered into a new dimension of technique and musicality, to a degree that would have been unimaginable when I started 60 years ago. I was discussing this recently with Roland Szentpali, the Hungarian tuba virtuoso, and he presented me the best accolade I’ve ever received.

Roland wrote: “It’s just not the same; now there are lots of players who can play at a high level and a few tubists who are creative and original and even fewer that are versatile...but you were an UFO”... Roland Szentpali

The past has given me the experience to look to the future to continue the tuba experience in whatever form it evolves. I am very thankful to all those that have helped me accrue these experiences.

April 9, 2012, Tokyo Japan

Hearing realistically

Since I stopped playing ten years ago, I’ve been experiencing frequent reoccurring dreams. It seems just closing that tuba case for the last time did not remove it from the more hidden corners of my mind; 60 years of constant life with an instrument just doesn’t go away easily.

These dreams, or nightmares, which ever they are, started with me finding myself seated in front of an orchestra playing a concerto and discovering that I’d never heard the music before, not knowing when to make the entrance or what to play. In some dreams I frequently was sitting in the back row of the orchestra with the brass section playing a Bruckner or Mahler symphony and realizing I had not played in years and was totally tuba nonfunctional. I would wake up panicked.

After over a year of not playing, the dreams turned to another direction of anxiety. Here are a few: When playing in a strange hall, I was unable to find my way to the stage, there were stairways that led to dead ends, elevators that went to the wrong floors and the chronic problem of simply not being able to find my tuba. There were many times I would miss the bus, miss the plane, lose my concert clothes, or forget my black shoes! Perhaps the most ominous scene of all was going on stage and finding no chair or music stand for the tuba and when going back stage to get help there was nobody there. I’m still working on what it all means!

The frequency of these dreams has dramatically dropped in the last few months after a ten year break from playing, which I surmise is because I’ve started practicing again; I was encouraged to do so by esteemed colleagues at Musashino Academia Musicae, and other musician friends, who suggested that my students would greatly benefit if I were to play occasionally during my lessons. This has proven to be true.

Playing a brass instrument is very similar to athletic function, like basketball, track or swimming; aging decreases our ability to function at the same efficiency that we are able to reach in our youth. This is particularly true regarding tuba because of the necessary required large amount of air; vital capacity decreases with age. I was instantly struck, when I began playing again, by the fact that the instrument seemed much heavier that it did ten years before and that my air capacity was obviously diminished. This meant that the phrases I could play ten years ago in one breath were simply impossible now… very frustrating. I decided to stop performing in 2002 because I could feel those signs of aging, because I could hear those signs of aging.

In the last few months since I started playing again I have happily progressed from being absolutely nonfunctional to playing simple pieces almost well. I became my own teacher and applied the same methods I would use with students in managing air supply problems. At first, I was so encouraged by my progress that I forgot my knowledge and experience in hearing older players passing their prime; it’s a sad sound, the tone quality starts to get thin, there is an audible shake in the sustained passages and, of course, that telltale sound when a player begins running out of air. It’s sadder still when an aging player doesn’t hear the change.

I was tempted to perform again; in fact, in a moment of weakness I even promised I would play one piece (a very easy piece) on a recital with my good friend and old student Roland Szentpali next month. However, after two months of practicing an hour almost every day and progressing almost to the level I was in 2002 at my final concert, I needed to remember that the reason I stopped playing at that time was because that playing level had audibly dropped!

I will continue to practice, but maybe only for a short time each day, and I will occasionally play in the lesson room for my students. Fortunately, my ears seem to still function in a discerning way, which should keep me out of trouble; the idea of playing for students is that it should be exemplary. Speriamo! Roger

May 1, 2012, Tokyo, Japan

SOLO - Marco Pierobon Trumpet

Personal and Powerful

I have always made it a policy in my blogs to avoid writing reviews and in the last five years or so, since I started the blogs, I have only written two, one for trumpet and one for ophiclide; I have never written one for tuba and probably never will.

In the past few years there has been a surge in the number of solo trumpet CDs released and many of them have been wonderful, but in most cases a piece of the puzzle has been missing; in the new CD, SOLO, with Italian trumpet player Marco Pierobon, the puzzle is complete. Marco Pierobon has the power of Bud Herseth, the 19th century awareness of Timofei Dokshizer, the technical freedom of Rafael Mandez and the great lead player skill of Harry James. But there is more!

In this CD we can listen to an extraordinary assortment of repertoire:
Alexander Arutiunian: Trumpet Concerto in Ab Major
Oskar Böhme: Trumpet Concerto, transcribed for winds by Goeffery Bergler
James Curnow: Concertpiece
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, arranged by Timofei Dokshizer
Alexander Goedicke: Concert Study
Michele Mangani: Theme for Trumpet (written for Macro Pierobon)
Allen Vizzutti: American Jazz Suite.

All of these great pieces can certainly stand-alone, but Marco’s versatility in these performances is absolutely amazing; quite simply, all the various styles represented are exactly right. But there is still one more thing that needs to be pointed out: Marco is Italian and as well the comparisons with the great trumpet players mentioned above, he has that visceral passionate musicality that we associate with Luciano Pavarotti. For example, every time I listen to the THEME FOR TRUMPET by Michele Mangani it makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

By the way Michele Mangani is the conductor of the Orchestra di Fiati delle Marche (Marche Wind Orchestra), which is the very able band accompanying this album.

In all fairness I have to disclose Marco was one of my students in the mid 90s when I was working with the brass of the Italian Youth Orchestra at the Fiesole Scuola di Musica in Toscana. I’m sure I haven’t allowed that association to influence this review. Please listen to this remarkable CD and judge for yourself.

Tokyo, September 11, 2011

Bonus - take a look at this short video for an insight into Marco Pierobon's playing (watch all of it) http://youtu.be/EFAdbrejDBc

Four Shark Stories

Ever since I was a young boy I can remember the men in my small world telling colorful stories about their fishing adventures, sometimes about the ones that got away but also the ones they caught. However, something in my undeveloped and naïve perceptive abilities told me these stories were untrue or at least exaggerated. It asks the question how was I able to tell these were “Fish stories” at that young age? Retrospectively I believe there is something basic, natural and instinctive in both the telling and the hearing of these stories, everyone knew it was more entertainment than integral reporting, maybe it’s something like some aboriginal tribe acting out the happenings of the day around the campfire with song, dance and story telling.

In my late teens and early twenties I was an enthusiastic diver and I spent my summers in Southern California in a diving school for a large number of other divers like myself; I was away from the harsh winters of upstate New York while attending the Eastman School of Music. It became clear very early on that this group of quasi Neptunites loved to tell shark stories with the same exuberance with the same clear proclivity to exaggeration that the old men showed when I was a boy, but the exaggeration regarding shark stories was developed to a much higher level and a greater sense of drama; still clearly fictitious.

This seems to be a strange introduction to the telling of my four shark encounters. The fact is I almost never tell these stories because; I get the feeling that even before the first word my listeners are thinking, “Ohoh, here comes another shark story”. Well, please believe me, the shark stories following are true; I was there!!

Story #1: This is a short story; it was summer 1957 and it was my second dive using SCUBA at Catalina, a beautiful island 26 miles of the cost from Los Angeles Harbor. The Sunday diving boat became a habit for the next few summers.

My partner on this dive was a much more experienced diver than I and quite simply I was just following on his dive. We were gliding `just above the flat sand bottom when he brushed away the sand from an irregular spot, the tail of something big was exposed and my friend immediately grabbed it and was suddenly was being pulled along the bottom by what was clearly a shark around 5 feet long. It had the shark form with the fins, the head and… the teeth. It also had what seemed to be beautiful wings. I was to find out later that this was an angel shark, a very tranquil shark. When my friend let go of the tail the shark settled back on the bottom and camouflaged itself again in the sand again.

Now it was my turn! I did as I was told by the underwater sign language of my friend; I grabbed the tail and enjoyed a very exciting 30-second ride. Unforgettable!

On that same dive I was presented my first taste of sashmi (raw fish). My friend opened a beautiful shell, cut out the meat with his knife, cut away the rim and cut the morsel in half, he took out his SCUBA mouthpiece and ate it.

For the second time in 10 minutes it was my turn again. I took the other piece of shellfish and ate it 60 feet under water; it was delicious, with just the right amount of salt. I learned back on the boat that it was a scallop; in Japan it’s called Hotate and is considered a delicacy.

That was a good day.

Story #2: During a day off from the New Hampshire Music Festival in 1960, I decided to go to the coast and take my first dive in the Atlantic. I was diving alone, which I was taught never to do but the mystic of the deep compromised my reason. My interest was to look at the many lobster traps in the area. At about 20 feet they were easy to find and each of the traps had two or three lobsters inside. I love lobster and my temptation was great but just as I was considering the ethics and logistics of stealing just one lobster I saw what was clearly a shark, it was over four feet and almost black. It just hovered above the traps and seemed motionless. Suddenly the moral question of stealing was clearly resolved and I quickly left the area.

To this day I question if the shark was real, robbing the trap would have been so easy that I wondered if the motionless shark was a decoy and placed there to discourage any divers from looking for a free dinner. If so, it worked very well.

Story #3: Back at Catalina on a weekend trip with a tuba playing friend who had 35 foot schooner, we planned on a weekend of spear fishing and abalone diving. After a night of sleeping in the boat we took an early morning dive without SCUBA. We were just swimming on the surface and were essentially nautical sightseers. The shark appeared instantly, it was about 6 feet long and seemed interested in what we were doing in its territory. I was amazed at its beauty, how could a beast be so perfect, perfection in “aqua-dynamics”.

My reaction was to freeze, to be suspended on the surface and to move absolutely as little as possible. I learned in diving school that there is nothing in the sea clumsier than a human being; the best defense was to be as motionless as possible.

The shark struck me as non-threatening, but still it had my full attention. Suddenly, for no visible reason the shark lurched, turned 180° and disappeared, all within a quarter second. I stayed in the motionless “hanging” position for another minute. Finally, I took my head out of the water and looked for my friend; I saw him on top of some very sharp rocks protruding out of the water and covered with barnacles. While my reaction was to freeze his reaction was to swim as fast as possible to a “Safe place”! When I got to the rock I could see that in his haste he just climbed straight up the rock as fast as possible without regard to the sharpness of the barnacles, his legs were badly cut and bleeding abundantly, not a good thing while avoiding a shark. Dan was not advantaged by diving school! We waited about an hour for scabs to form on his legs, then swam back to the boat and had lunch.

Story #4: Through the seventies I took an annual short vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with my daughter Melody. Each year there I would take a swim across the bay, it was my private proof of manhood task. It was a reasonable swim, probably 500 yards in warm and not too rough water, always a pleasant and quasi-spiritual experience. This particular year was a little different, ten minutes into the swim I found myself surrounded be what seemed to be a huge school of barracuda, to be honest I really don’t know if it was huge, I’d never swam in a school of barracuda before. They were swimming in a circle and the water appeared to be boiling from their movement. Quickly, I decided to end this annual proof of manhood and to go back to the shore.

With the Barracuda gone and the shore about 100 yards away, just when I was feeling safe the fin appeared! I thought, I hoped, it was a dolphin. It wasn’t, that was a shark fin and it was moving in circles around me;I had seen that same sequence several times in Movies, this time it was real. I’ll never know how long it stayed with me, even though I successfully maintained my cool I’m not sure if those circles lasted five minutes or a half hour---- it seemed a lot longer! There was nothing I could do, I just treaded water and kept my eyes following the fin. As I worked my way little by little toward the beach, the shark finally disappeared and when I was standing at the water’s edge on the beach there was a small group of people to welcome me plus three lifeguards.

I’m proud to have stayed cool but out of the water I began to realize the seriousness of the event and with what I’m sure was an accelerated heart beat I instinctively found my way to the bar located in the hotel swimming pool and enjoyed a couple of the specialties, coco locos.

So, a little break from the musical sphere, a little brag credit and a little dealing with that exciting part of my life that I miss sometimes.

August 1, 2011, Tokyo