OK...
Unexpectedly the parts for this concert (this is not one of the orch's in Tenn...yet another orch. out-of-state) were mailed to me (original parts - yikes!
)
The "new" piece is one of those busy-yet-not-difficult tuba parts (seldom rests longer than eight bars - and seldomly-occurring...ie. probably "too much tuba").
They are also playing
Rhapsody in Blue (yeah...the regular Gershwin) which has been *edited/arranged, and (just as with those laughably-busy
as-if-tuba-player-written Dvorak 9 parts) it's way-WAY too much tuba, but whatever (if I'm there, I might as well play too many notes, yes?) It's seven - count-'em SEVEN - pages packed with notes - and (like the "new" piece) very few rests... As I'm posting, Google tells me that the arranger is a guitar player, and I'm now seeing that - underneath the title - is printed "Chamber Orchestra Edition"...so (as I also read that he arranged R.I.B. for guitar solo - this must have been arranged for a specific concert where he performed the solo guitar part) I suppose I'm covering (???) stuff like second bassoon, bass trombone, 4th horn, E.H. (??) etc. - just as with those scaled-down orchestrations when Broadway shows hit the road. (I will make certain that Fat Bastard really makes an ass of himself.
)
Also send was Copland's
Rodeo and a 4-pager John Williams "E.T." thing - whereby Williams KNOWS how to write for tuba, there are plenty of rests, and people don't grow weary of hearing that plump/low/umbrella sound.
finger-wagging "y'all oughtah's":
Composers arrangers need to reserve nearly wall-to-wall jolly/phat tuba sound for yuletide charts...and mix in a bunch of those fragile/delicate/sparsely-orchestrated/reminiscent-of-crisp-fresh-fallen-snow/loaded-with-weird-foreign-onomatopoeiae-such-as-"fum" charts - at Christmas concerts - to offset the jolly/phat wall-to-wall tuba ones...and (obviously) I'm not referring to wind bands, where the tubas have to cover what would have preferably been given to the double basses."
That
red-circled low A-flat (in p.1 of the ORIGINAL R.I.B. part - shown below) is my FAVORITE tuba note in the entire piece (an important tempo-setting downbeat) - particularly if played on fat/resonant B-flat tuba (such as Fat Bastard) in a big hall with nice acoustics (' actually played in last year in Memphis - with all of those factors in place).
_________________________________________________________
*As it is finally in public domain (as previously -
of course - I didn't possess a copy of this part
), here is p.1 (of 4, and with tons of rests) of the original tuba part. Notice the trombone cues in G-flat major...In the ARRANGEMENT I've been handed, I'm friggin' PLAYING that mess.
- RIB1.png (108.89 KiB) Viewed 6077 times
