Octubafest at SFASU...

Last weekend my good friends Charlie and Suzi tipped me to the fact that The Stephen F. Austin School of Music was presenting Octubafest, a recital featuring internationally known tuba player Stephen Kunzer. I met them there last night for the concert. 

I must admit that I have not heard of Stephen. That's the fate of internationally known tuba players. No one knows you although some one did ask me today if I would be performing Durum and Tuba Christmas again. I guess that's more local than bad world wide but Stephen has been in many orchestras, ensembles playing with pop artists such as Willie, Emmy Lou and John Fogerty in addition to teaching duties at Oklahoma State University. 

Here he performs a piece to recorded accompaniment. Nice looking mellow sounding older horn. Mostly modern compositions were performed with some in a classical style, some in a fun type spirit and nothing like a tuba player on a French Quarter Street corner.   

The piano accompanist is Michael Scheider.  

I got a pretty good close up of horn, vales, and technique. Wish I had a chance to talk to him as there was one piece performed that had a kind of droning, tuvian throat singing, talking through the tuba sound with intervals that brought to mind chanted middle eastern calls to prayer.   

There was also a duet with euphonium player Danny Chapa. Very good performance with a good mesh of the low tuba tones and the singing timber of the euphonium. 

This part brought to mind the time years ago I was in the SFASU music department when I payed a tuba duet in a recital similar to this . The piece was a barque style trumpet duet that had been arranged for two tubas. My partner, I am ashamed to admit I don't remember his name (maybe Johnny?) after all these years, was an African American guy and you probably could not have put two more different people together in an ensemble if you tried. I ran into him one college weekend night in the liquor store and he was dressed like he was playing a gig with George Clinton's P-Funk Allstars. I was dressed appropriately for the front row at a Willie Nelson picnic. We were both a sign of the times, at that time, and I I wonder if the individual pairing and the idea of the tuba duet was something that our tuba teacher, who's name I can't remember either cooked up as some kind of big joke.  Guess I'll never know but now these guys are doing this and Tuba Christmas sells expensive trademarked gear so maybe we were just all ahead of the time. 

Did I mention Stephen had two tubas he switched between for the concert? I am going to have to talk to my wife about that. 

Check out the the SFASU fine arts web site. They have interesting recitals like this all the time. If you want to check my next tuba gig come to St. Patrick's Catholic Church 7pm All Saints Day Mass. It is a Holy Day of Obligation and I'll be playing what else but The Saints Go Marching In.