TubeNet

In May of this year a bunch of us from the Santa Cruz City Band (CA) went to Alushta, Ukraine (on the Black Sea) to perform (Santa Cruz and Alushta are sister cities). It was a wonderful trip in so many ways. Besides performing a solo concert, we did a combined concert with the Alushta music school band (kids 16 and under). Here's a clip of us doing "Stars and Stripes", with an intro by our conductor, John Thomas. The tuba we donated to the music school (in addition to several other instruments) was a brand new VMI 3301, which I really enjoyed playing (you can briefly see me waving it) - and you can hear the crowd yelling "Spaseeba" - Russian for thank you. Pretty funny vocals to S and S - we weren't expecting that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TUO5AhcIMA" target="_blank

Yes, the school was thrilled to be getting a new tuba as well as the other instruments. Per capita income is very low there and instruments are hard to come by. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see anyone play the VMI. The school had only one tuba (a beat up old St. Pete?) and one tuba student. It would be great to go back there some day and see the horn in action. I played the VMI for about a month total and ended up really liking it. Took a bit to get used to it, though, as my regular horn is an old Conn Grand Orchestral.