Enlightenment in BBb

I was fifteen; it would have been 1953, when I made the change from BBb to CC tuba. It seemed like I had been liberated, the response was quicker, the tone was clearer, the low register was actually better and, of course, the high register was much easier; it was simply more fun to play and I never looked back. Around the same time my good friend Tommy Johnson made the same change. We would talk to each other about our fantastic discovery and how we felt sorry for those players that were still struggling with the encumberments of BBbs. During the next years we watched as most tubists made similar changes and little by little CC tubas became the contrabasstubas of choice by most tubists in the United States.

It was in the 60s and 70s that several America tubists with CC tubas started winning positions in European orchestras and many more were pursuing positions in Europe. Very quickly the tuba communities in Austria and Germany began requiring tubists to play BBb tubas for all auditions. Of course, deductive reasoning led one to the conclusion that the German school tubists were using this requirement to assure that only German school tubists would win the jobs. Certainly to some degree that was true but there was more to it than just that.

I have been in many situations through the last five decades when I’ve had the opportunity to listen and compare the sounds of the CC and BBb tubas and in every occasion I have favored the CC but in light of an experience I had recently in Detmold, Germany, while giving a masterclass at the Conservatory, I have to face that I may have maintained that same kind of prejudice and dogma on behalf of CC tubas that I have accused the Germans of having for BBbs.

In an ensemble masterclass my colleague professors and I heard a five trombone and tuba ensemble playing an arrangement of a Bruckner piece. The Meinl Weston 195 Fafner 4/4 BBb tuba that was used was strikingly rich, clear, gloriously beautiful and exactly the right instrument for that music; it was instantly obvious that there was a valid use for a BBb tuba that I had not seen before, further it was clear if I still had a few years of symphony orchestra work ahead of me I would feel a strong need to have such a tuba. My colleague Anne Jelle Visser, a CC tuba oriented player with the Zurich Opera and who shared this enlightening experience with me has subsequently ordered two of these tubas, one for the Zurich Conservatory and one for the Zurich Opera Orchestra. If I played in a symphony orchestra I would probably not use it more that 5% of the time but those times when I needed it I would have to have it.

There is another issue of hard realism here: If we tubists want to be like our trumpet playing colleagues and own several instruments in all keys and sizes for all occasions, we would either have to be rich or have generous benefactors, such as orchestras or conservatories to possess all these instruments. Economics is a factor in all our lives but as artists it should not let that limit our thinking and our vision.

However, I try to imagine the reaction of a symphony tour manager while being informed that for the next tour we will need to carry four of five instruments or filling my personal vehicle with all the instruments I might need for a studio job! Sometimes it’s tough to be a tubist.

Tokyo, May 6, 2009

Remembering Nancy Walker

It was 65 years ago, we had finished our first year in kindergarten and were starting our new school year in the 1st grade, it was 1944, and we were 6. I think about her at least once a year, usually in those momentary thresholds between being asleep and awake, those times when it’s difficult to discriminate between thought and dream.

Nancy Walker and I were not particularly good friends nor were we adversaries. We were seated together in the classroom and for two years shared one of those two child tables with a small shelf under the surface where we could store papers, artwork, pencils, crayons and other small things.

She was taller than the other girls, blond and always had what I remember as a shy quiet smile. She was smart, talented, uncomplicated and in retrospect seemed to be totally trusting. Life was easy for her. Her work was ahead of mine in every respect, spelling, writing, art, arithmetic, she was better at everything, even music; sometimes she would help me with my work.

I think this may have been the first time in my life I had experienced envy, I wished I could have her same ease of dealing with the simple complex of 1st grade encounters; for me everything was hard. And I especially envied the fact that she showed, and I’m sure felt, no sense of superiority; she was just good! I was aware I couldn’t be as good, as nice and as friendly as her and that troubled me.

We stayed seated together well into the 2nd grade. Then something happened, I think I had done something, I can’t remember what, and we were separated. Nancy never wanted to talk to me anymore. I was sad but tried to laugh about it every time I saw her. For the next years, through elementary, junior high school, and high school she remained distant. I will never remember what I did but I wish I hadn’t done it.

I dreamed about Nancy last night. It was a good dream; she was old but still had that shy quiet smile. I tried to explain to her that I was sorry for whatever I had done to cause her to distance herself. She seemed moved and touched my hand and said she couldn’t remember what I had done either but she forgave me. I think she was a wonderful person I wish we could have been good friends.

I resisted waking up for as long as I could this morning.

After searches I have sadly discovered many of my class, the 1938 vintage, have already deceased.

I hope you are well Nancy.

Okayama, Japan, April 19, 2009

Hormones and Cherry Blossoms

The March masterclass tour is finished, the remarkably high level of the students I encountered at all the venues, Lahti Finland, Bolzano Italy, Amsterdam, Detmold Germany, and Zurich were inspirational and I’m going home fresh and invigorated. Now in Lausanne, Switzerland I happily start my countdown for a new school year at the Musashino Academy of Music in Tokyo and the Tokyo spring, a stimulating pink world of hormones and cherry blossoms.


Spring is a formidable time everywhere in the world and its effect on us is perhaps more powerful than most of us realize. We are, whether we like to admit it or not, just one of many beasts on this planet and spring is the time that most species move to continue their life cycles of our species too; it’s the rites of spring for the birds, bees, flowers and trees and even with the politics, economics, technologies and intellectual pursuits; we are still only just another of the many animals on this planet and we are certainly profoundly effected by springs power.


I will get home just in time for a hanami, (viewing of the cherry blossoms). I’ll go with friends and enjoy the sakura (cherry blossoms), enjoy watching the people and I will be aware that hanami is a much larger thing than just a beautiful Japanese tradition. The flowers will be beautiful and the Japanese girls will be beautiful, but it’s also part of the nature of spring, it’s part of the rites of spring. Japan is an amazing place to enjoy this human condition. We are lucky to be able to view the spring both from the standpoint of our basic viscerality and from our more sophisticated human culture.


Wherever you are, however you celebrate your hanami, your rites of spring, I hope you enjoy it; it’s a good life.


Lausanne, Switzerland, April 5, 2009

Happily Humbled--Again and Again

Leonardo Da Vinci said, “It is the duty of the student to surpass his teacher”. Da Vinci was very right, I would add that the greatest pleasure a teacher can have is to experience his students realizing that duty. I’ve seen increasingly more students reach that level recently; it’s a wonderful feeling.

This Da Vinci quote was really not new a new concept to me. In the years between 1956 and 1960 while attending the Eastman School of Music I was boasting once to my old teacher in Los Angeles, Robert Marsteller, that I had a fellow student, a trombonist, in Eastman who was reputed to be a better student than the famous Gordon Pulis, the first trombonist of the New York Philharmonic, was in the 1940s. Mr. Marsteller broke into laughter and said “God help the student who isn’t better than Gordon Pulis was when he was a student”. Robert Marsteller was a man of vision.

I’ve always been quite aware that there were two levels of tuba playing in my life, the one that existed in my mind and the one in my hands, which, with the physical encumberments of breathing, embouchure, tonguing and fingering, regardless of how much I worked, never reached the level of that tuba in my mind. It’s interesting that after I played my last concert in 2001, that tuba perceived in my mind continued to develop quicker and better without those physical encumberments of actually playing.

There was, however, something else happening in the tuba world that was broadening my tuba vision. A new generation of tubists was emerging that was abundantly realizing the words of Da Vinci. Through the last decade I have seen increasingly numerous students ‘surpassing their teachers’ and from my personal vista I have heard students in Asia, North America and Europe even surpassing that perceived tuba that existed only in my musical mind, in fact, much of my lately acquired tuba awareness has come from those students.

Our world of Tubadom is a superb microcosm of the changing world we live in. The growth, the awareness and the excellence seen in our art is truly amazing, but although nothing like it has ever happened before in music history, it’s just an example of what we see in our daily lives. Computer science, cell phones and automobiles are other examples of improvements coming so fast it’s nearly impossible for us to keep up.

There is a vast difference, however, between the progress in technologies and that of our small, isolated and idealistic world of the tuba. The world today needs better computers, better cell phones, and more efficient cars, and we could never go back in time even a few years. But there is another powerful motivation regarding computers, cell phones, cars and the other vast growing necessary products appearing in our world; the better these products become the more money there is to be made.

The development of the tuba is quite different and inspired by a different kind of energy. Our level of performance, the vision of what can be, the teaching, the institutions that promote our instruments and its performance are all primarily inspired by the fact that we love music and we love this instrument. The instrument manufactures are, of course, happy with our idealism and happy to provide us with the equipment we require; we are lucky to have them and our idealism means profit for them.

It’s dangerous to take too much time reflecting on our accomplishments of the past. Even so, it’s quite appropriate to reflect, a little retrospect is good; it can show us a clearer direction to continue this historical success.

Amsterdam, March 25, 2009

Domaine Forget

It’s a habit now, a very good habit. It started in 1954 when I was 15 years old and got on a train in Los Angeles, destination the National Music Camp, Interlochen, Michigan; I returned there for the next three years. Almost every year since that time I’ve been involved in some music camp or some masterclass stage somewhere in the world; the venue changed but the habit remained.

Many of these courses occurred for several years and the attachments grew strong, it was always a little sad when circumstances, usually economics, caused these courses to end. There was the special course in Villa Nova De Castillion near Valencia, Spain, the band camp in Kalavrita, Greece, Musica Riva in Riva del Garda, Italy and the Yamaha Band Camp in Hamamatsu, Japan, all very special occasions, which offered the special atmospheres of the unique localities, renewing old and creating new friendships and most importantly high level learning experiences.

Of all these excellent summer courses there is one that stands out in my mind as being by far the best, that is Domaine Forget Académie de Musique et Dance in Quebec, Canada. Domaine Forget is located among the rolling hills of Saint-Irénée 90 minutes northeast of Québec City on a vast historical property overlooking the St. Lawrence River, an unparalleled setting providing visitors with a cultural experience unmatched anywhere in North America. Le Domaine Forget attracts mostly North American students but every year there are a few students that come from Europe and Asia.

The combination of fine students, very high-level internationally renowned teachers, a highly efficient and low profile administration, an unbelievably beautiful location, and at least of equal importance, it’s fun, it’s big fun. The brass classes this year are from June 1 to 13, however, if circumstances make two weeks impossible, it is possible to come for only one week.
I have aggressively avoided posting anything that may appear like an advertisement either on my blog or rogerbobo.com so please view this as an invitation, an invitation to a very special two weeks (or one), learning guaranteed, fun guaranteed; you will be very welcome.

For more information go to the Domaine Forget web page.

Riva del Guarda, Italy, March 16, 2009