From the June 17, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
MSO selects its new tubist
Illinois native one of 77 to audition for chair
By PIET LEVY
plevy@journalsentinel.com
Posted: June 16, 2005
With the bellowing cry of "Ride of the Valkyries" echoing all around them, many clutching gargantuan, blunt instruments in their fists, some 77 people came to Milwaukee ready for war. And ready to play Wagner.
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For the first time in nearly a decade, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra held open auditions Monday for the permanent tuba chair. Its only tuba chair.
By Monday evening, 63 players went packing. The next afternoon, the 14 who remained competed in the semifinals.
And by that evening, there were just three remaining. After the talented trio performed for music director Andreas Delfs, the maestro consulted the judging committee and picked his player: Randall Montgomery.
"It's an honor to be chosen," said Montgomery, 32, on the phone after his flight out of Milwaukee. "It's a real high to win an audition like this with so many fine players."
Currently residing in Boston, Montgomery is an Illinois native. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, with a master's degree from the New England Conservatory, Montgomery was the principal tubist for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the New World Symphony, an orchestral academy in Miami Beach. He has performed with the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops on multiple occasions, including concerts on PBS as well as a pregame show at Super Bowl XXXVI.
Along with the 76 other competitors, Montgomery in the first round had to play selections from Mahler, Berlioz, Prokofiev and Wagner. For the semifinals, the tuba players performed the "Bydlo" movement from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," a challenging solo so high it is often played by trombonists on euphonium. For the finals, Montgomery wowed judges with his rendition of two movements from Vaughn Williams' "Tuba Concerto." He was then chosen for the position for which players from as far as Japan and Sweden had come to compete.
"We had three excellent finalists," said Rip Prétat, MSO's assistant orchestra personnel manager who organized the audition. "(But) I think it was evident in (Montgomery's) playing he was the most experienced."
In 2004, the symphony's tuba chair was vacated by Alan Baer for a spot with the New York Philharmonic. Baer's one-year replacement, Steven Campbell, has moved on to the Minnesota Orchestra.
And now Montgomery will be the symphony's principal tubist beginning next season.
"Many of the players have good rhythms, good intonation," said Richard Kimball, a bass trombonist and committee member of the MSO's tuba chair candidates. "But once in a while a player has the style down. He makes the instrument sing almost, he makes the music come alive. He's the cream on top of the sundae, the guy who can not only be a partner but an inspiration."
"I think we found somebody like that," Prétat confirmed.
so i would suggest hearing this guy. He is the kind of guy that the last year in boston, every time I heard him, its just made me want to practice! way to go randy!