Mr. Tuba (excerpt)

MUSIC * BIOGRAPHY

“In the same line as Casals who put the cello on the map, Segovia who put the classical guitar on the map, and Rampal who put the flute on the map, Harvey Phillips has put the tuba on the map. That’s his historical role.” —Janos Starker

MR TUBA .

MR TUBA .

HARVEY PHILLIPS FOREWORD BY

“Harvey Phillips IS the tuba.” —Eugene Ormandy

“Harvey put class in the low brass.” —Clark Terry

“Harvey Phillips is Mr. Tuba U.S.A.” —Leopold Stokowski

PHILLIPS

Harvey Phillips (1929–2010) was Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington. World renowned as a tuba soloist and brass quintet leader, he founded and directed OctubaFest, TubaChristmas, TubaSantas, TubaCompany, and the Matteson-Phillips TubaJazz Consort.

“The Paganini of the Tuba.” —Newsweek

Author photo: Courtesy of Indiana University

Bloomington & Indianapolis iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796

DAVID N. BAKER

W

$32.00

ith warmth and humor, tuba virtuoso Harvey Phillips tells the story of his amazing life and career, from his Missouri childhood through his days as a performer with the King Bros. Circus Band and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Band, his training at the Juilliard School, a stint with the U.S. Army Field Band, and his freelance days with the New York City Opera and Ballet. A founder of the New York Brass Quintet, Phillips served as vice president for financial affairs of the New England Conservatory of Music and became Professor of Music at Indiana University. The creator of an industry of TubaChristmases, OctubaFests, and TubaSantas, he crusaded for recognition of the tuba as a serious musical instrument, commissioning more than 200 works. Enhanced by more than 60 color and blackand-white photographs, Mr. Tuba conveys Phillips’s playful zest for life while documenting his important musical legacy.

“Possibly the greatest tuba player of all time.” —The New York Times

INDIANA

Jacket illustrations: Front. Harvey Phillips in a C. G. Conn publicity photo, 1966. Back. Phillips and the New York Brass Quintet, 1966.

contents

Foreword by David N. Baker  ix

Acknowledgments  xi

Growing Up in Missouri

1

2

King Bros. Circus Band

17

3

Traveling with the Greatest Show on Earth

35

4

Juilliard, Studying with William J. Bell

65

5

Freelancing 101

86

6

Carol

106

7

Chamber Music, New York Brass Quintet

118

8

A New York Professional

134

9

On Tour with the New York Brass Quintet

166

10

Family, Friends, and Summer Activities

208

11

New England Conservatory of Music

233

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1

The Search for TubaRanch

265

13

Institute for Advanced Musical Studies

292

14

Bassed in Bloomington

317

15

Carnegie Hall Recitals

352

16

Indiana University Retirement

380

17

Renaissance of the Tuba: A Summary

396

18

On Being a Teacher

412

19

Performance Tips

432

20

Coda

442

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12

Friends and Colleagues 451  Appendix 459  Index 471

Mr. Tuba

the 21st Century Bebop Band, featuring flute, trumpet or sax, cello, and tuba, with bass, drums, and piano. When Dizzy Gillespie gave a concert at the IU Auditorium, the 21st Century Bebop Band warmed up the audience. Dizzy didn’t play with us. But, when the concert was over, Dizzy told David Baker about Hot House (which had a very convoluted arrangement), “I’m glad I didn’t have to play on that!” The 21st Century Bebop Band performed the same service later for Maynard Ferguson. David is a very creative composer and one of the fastest writers of music I know. We played standards from jazz and bebop repertoire like “Preacher Man” and David wrote a lot of original tunes as well, such as “PaDoSpe” for Patty and Dominic Spera and “CaHaPhi” for Carol and me. Another of my prime interests was to have time for activities with the IU Band Department. I appeared numerous times with the IU Symphonic Band, and appeared as a solo clinician with Frederick Ebbs, director of the IU Band Department, at music conferences. When Fred Ebbs left the position, he was replaced by Ray Cramer, who had been one of his assistants.

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The First OctubaFest—Starting a Tr adition I realized that all the components of the IU Music School scheduled their students for recitals, most of them in the spring. Early in the fall, the Recital Hall was already being booked for spring dates. I decided I would like to have my students present concerts early in the first semester. I wanted to do five evening concerts, in one week. The upper class students would perform works they had prepared, to illustrate materials entering students would be assigned later. Newly enrolled students would perform works they had prepared for entrance auditions, illustrating their potential. The idea was for everybody to get acquainted as quickly as possible so they could start helping each other. It wouldn’t bring special attention to these tuba recitals to have them scattered in between recitals for violin, voice, piano, etc., in the spring. I saw in these concerts opportunities to acquaint an audience of community members with the repertoire and performance levels of tuba and euphonium students at IU.

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The only time I could get a solid week for tuba in the Recital Hall was the first week in October. So why not call that week a festival? In preparing copy for a publicity poster, I made several attempts about what to call it until finally I wrote “OctoberTubaFestival.” Then it struck me. Why not “OctubaFest”? My tuba studio was like the great German Oktoberfest each fall. The Germans celebrated the harvest of crops, and we celebrated the harvest of a new “crop” of freshman tuba and euphonium players at our school. The first OctubaFest took place at Indiana University in 1973 during the first week of October (known to me as Octuba). Some years it has been Septuba. All five concerts were booked in the Recital Hall, Monday through Friday at 7 pm. I insisted that all of my students appear onstage at some point during those five days. The Friday program featured our tuba ensemble. On Saturday there was a reception at TubaRanch. Freshmen (and everybody else, from IU and the community) were welcomed by my family and the William J. Bell Chapter of TUBA. I had thought about William Bell’s incredible musicianship and how much he loved his parties at McSorley’s. I wanted to combine the two. Our reception quickly became an OctubaFeast. The reception and the concerts were free. OctubaFest and OctubaFeast had arrived! We were proud to put Bill Bell’s stamp on our OctubaFest. I decided to make these five recitals an annual occurrence, another annual event dedicated to honoring his memory and celebrating his life. Actually, all the things I did were inspired by my respect for and association with William Bell. At the end of the week, for the OctubaFeast, we ordered a thirty-foot cheese board to be placed on the patio at the TubaRanch. The centerpiece was a round of Danish bleu cheese and after that was a Norwegian Jarlsberg, Swiss Emmenthaler, French Brie, Vermont cheddar, Wisconsin Colby, and a few other special cheeses. As had been the center at McSorley’s Old Ale House, we encouraged a platter of cheese with an equal supply of onion. Libations were made available to satisfy the age of each student. People magazine came out to write an article on OctubaFest, and published a picture of me near the barn. That week, everything went spectacularly.

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Mr. Tuba

Over the years, the OctubaFeast expanded to include the Marienfeld dancers from Germany, Indiana cloggers from Solsberry, a German band—from Germany—and lots of costumes. Sometimes, we gave out door prizes, like fifty dollars’ worth of sheet music, tickets to a sold-out Horowitz concert, a complete Western outfit, or a restaurant dinner for two with a chauffeured Cadillac. I was the chauffeur of my own Cadillac. Because the September and October weather can be rainy, one year we put up a tent at TubaRanch and we put the cheese board inside. One of the cheeses featured was an especially potent German Bierkase. It was raining the day of our feast and we put the sides down on the tent. Just before people arrived, Carol and a couple of the boys went out to roll up the canvas sidewall, which exposed the cheese. The first thing the guests did when they entered the tent was to look at the bottom of their shoes to see if they might be the source of the odor. It was overpowering. The next year we obtained a separate, smaller tent and put that particular cheese in it (alone!). IU Chancellor Wells, who called himself “an old euphonium player,” attended OctubaFest concerts and came out to TubaRanch for each OctubaFeast. When he was in a wheelchair, his driver would help him get from his car to a table. If the weather was too bad, or he didn’t feel well enough to sit at a table, we would serve him in the car. One year, the Cleveland Orchestra had an OctubaFest as a fundraiser. It was very successful and, in appreciation of being able to use the name OctubaFest, a voluntary contribution was made to the Harvey Phillips Foundation by a grateful supporter of the Cleveland Orchestra. I accepted an invitation for an early morning appearance from Gene Shalit to appear on the NBC Today Show in New York with my piano accompanist, Steve Harlos. We were soon joined by host Jane Pauley, a graduate of Indiana University. We had a lively conversation about the tuba and the music being written for it by American composers. This prompted a discussion about Alec Wilder and the special qualities of his compositions. The interview ended with a performance of Wilder’s Suite No. 1 for Tuba and Piano. Both Shalit and Pauley later accepted my invitations to guestconduct portions of the annual TubaChristmas concerts in Rockefeller Center.

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After the Today Show, it was a full day of OctubaFest activities for Steve and me. Our next stop was a 1:00 visit to a Harlem elementary school with a demonstration concert. It was fun to talk about music with some thirty eight-to-twelve-year-old enthusiasts. That evening at 8:00 we were joined at Carnegie Recital Hall by several of my IU students and New York City IU alumni. The concert was well attended and arrangements were made for a post-concert OctubaFeast at the famous Luchow’s German Restaurant. For three years, from 1983 to 1985, we produced OctubaFest as a joint venture between the City of Bloomington and my tuba studio. I had good relationships with every mayor. The first year of our collaboration, we worked with Mayor Tomilea Allison. On the roof of a big parking garage downtown we had a wine garden, a beer garden, and a kindergarten with games for the children, with qualified babysitters. The music for the celebration was a tuba ensemble of my own students and students from other schools. There was a polka-dancing contest. Fourteen restaurants signed up to prepare special German dishes for the occasion. In cooperation with Bloomington Hospital, we organized a volksmarch, which was a five- or sixmile health walk led by Bud Kohr, president of the hospital, which ended at OctubaFeast. OctubaFest was kind of a big deal in Bloomington! In German Oktoberfests, the Burgermeister is usually the mayor or other male official of the town. Mayor Allison invited Indiana University Chancellor Herman B Wells to serve as Bloomington’s first honorary Burgermeister. That pleased him. His smile was infectious. He was saluted by the Bloomington South High School Band, the Bloomington North High School Band, and the Ellettsville High School Band. In 1976, my tuba/euphonium class at IU had an OctubaFest halftime show at the football game, adding itself to the IU Marching Hundred, along with tubas and euphoniums from the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan. We had a stage setup consisting of two flatbed trailers. I commissioned the Opera Department to create a backdrop canvas measuring twenty-four by forty feet, depicting a German Bavarian village. Since that first OctubaFest in 1973, the idea spread all over the world, to more than one hundred college and university campuses.

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