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As I head back into the world of solo Tuba playing, I am aware that there is probably a lot of good stuff from 2002-today that I am not aware of. What are your favorite new works of the new century? Mine so far is the Sonata by Jan Bach.....

The term "turn of the century" is now confusing. Us more experienced folks think 1900. Now they got this 2000 thing that just doesn't seem right. Next they'll stop teaching cursive in school and because they don't have money to buy tubas, will consider an electric bass a reasonable substitute. With that, I wouldn't look at 21st century LIT, Id look at 20th century stuff. It was written for tuba.

bigboymusic wrote:As I head back into the world of solo Tuba playing, I am aware that there is probably a lot of good stuff from 2002-today that I am not aware of. What are your favorite new works of the new century? Mine so far is the Sonata by Jan Bach.....

Is there a sonata by Jan Bach for tuba? I'm only aware of the Concerto, String Quintet, Brass Quintets, and Tuba/Horn duo.
Best
2165

Oops, yes, the Bach is the Concerto....

Aw shucks....you had my hopes up:)
cheers
2165

opus37 wrote:The term "turn of the century" is now confusing. Us more experienced folks think 1900. Now they got this 2000 thing that just doesn't seem right. Next they'll stop teaching cursive in school and because they don't have money to buy tubas, will consider an electric bass a reasonable substitute. With that, I wouldn't look at 21st century LIT, Id look at 20th century stuff. It was written for tuba.

They don't teach cursive anymore (at least not where I was teaching) and I had a bass player in my band thanks to a previous teacher who didn't push the concert band instruments but instead used keyboard, bass, and guitar when a kids thought that those were the "cool" instruments (got rid of all except the one bass).

I'm not up on much of the literature so I won't speak to that, but there are good contemporary composers out there, some of whom frequent our own Tubenet.

I love modern/experimental/electronic music. I'll list some for ya, but keep in mind some of my favorite works were written before 2002 but are performed rather infrequently because of their inaccessibility or difficulty.

Andrzej Kryzanowski - Sonata (solo tuba) - 1973

Niklas Silvelov - Sonata for Tuba and Piano - 1992

Paul Hayden - Chaconne (tuba, piano) - 2000

Henryk Gorecki - Aria (tuba, tam tam, bass drum, piano) - 1994

Michael Horwood - Residue (tuba, prepared vibraphone) - 1981

Morton Subotnick - The First Dream of Light (tuba, piano, ghost electronics) - 1980

James Woodward - Tuba Concerto - 2000

John Stevens - monument - 2007

Those are a few of the top of my head.

I like "Strait Jacket" by Adam Gorb (2002), "Monument" by John Stevens (2007), "Concertpiece" by Libby Larsen (2000), and "Parallels" by Aron Romhanyi (2008) just to name a few. I have my own humble edition to the 21st century repertoire that I'm kind of partial to as well: "Diversions" (2009). There is a lot of good music out there for the tuba player who has the desire to play contemporary music written for his/her instrument. It just takes some digging and looking around. Lately, I've been going through the Editions BIM site looking for tuba music. They publish quality stuff, and usually make sample scores and recordings easily available.

Where can I find the subotnik piece?

punktuba wrote:Where can I find the subotnik piece?

I was wondering the same thing.

I'll just put a plug in for these couple of new pieces:

-Doug Spata's "Sonatina for Piano and Tuba" available through the Tuba/Euph Press - http://home.roadrunner.com/~dougspata/
-"Lovers and Pirates" for tuba and piano by Ken Kreuzer availble through Krusher Enterprises - http://www.kenkreuzer.com/
-"Or" for Solo tuba by Scott Worthington available through Undectuple Publishing - http://scottworthington.com/
-"Urban Suite" for tuba quartet by Shawn Kelly available through Cimarron Press - http://shawnkelleymusic.com/resources.html (this one was a finalist for the Harvey Phillips Award for excellence in composition)
-Barbara York has written quite a few pieces for the tuba in the 21st century, including the recent commission consortium that resulted in "Shamanic Journeys" - http://www.cimarronmusic.com/Composers/bio-york.cfm

Baadsvik recently put out a CD called 21st century Tuba Concertos, that might be a good starting place!

--T. J.

kprinz wrote:

punktuba wrote:Where can I find the subotnik piece?

I was wondering the same thing.

Hey guys--

I communicated with Morton Subotnick last year for a project I was working on in one of my classes here at LSU. In reference to his tuba piece he told me that he doesn't know if a score still exists and if it does, he doesn't know where. He had been splitting time between residences in CA and NYC up until a year or so ago when he finally got all of his CA belongings moved to NYC. He said if there is a score, it is probably in a box or file in his storage unit.

He also mentioned that no modern day technological attempt at re-creating his ghost electronics had been done. Back in the late 70s when he was working with this technology the actual electronics took up space that would amount to a small walk-in closet! According to his website, the ghost-score is currently being transferred into MaxMSP format, which would be AWESOME!

If you haven't heard the recording of it, Roger Bobo has it on two of his Crystal Records CDs.

There are lots of other really nice modern tuba pieces out there though. I need to mention again Residue for Tuba and Prepared Vibraphone by Michael Horwood. I just got the score in today and it looks to be quite good.

Check out the work of Ken Friedrich. Great variety and very melodic music to play.