[Dixielandjazz] Edinburgh Jazz Festival's Tubaramas

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi Robert et al,

The Tubarama and its partner in musical crime, the Banjorama, was the 
invention of Festival Director Mike Hart. Their sole purpose was to 
assemble as many tuba-players/banjoists as possible in their respective 
concerts and attempt to make some kind of entertainment from the 
resulting, repetitive cacophany.

I managed to dodge the banjo-thrashing event completely, but on one 
occasion, for entirely financial reasons, I agreed to play drums on a 
Tubarama concert. The line-up was about 20 tubas, one pianist, one 
banjoist whose time was dodgy (no names no packdrill) and me, so I 
figured my main priority was just keeping the time together, play mainly 
brushes to encourage the tubists to play quieter than treble forte  and 
forget about swinging as that was never going to happen with all that 
vertical *rhythm*.

Fortunately Eli Weinberger of the New Black Eagles had been appointed as 
musical director and he did a great job of directing the traffic. He 
also provided the only memorably tasteful piece in the entirely 
elephantine event. For one number, he put down his conductor's baton and 
played a ravishing version of When You Wish Upon A Star, with just piano 
and drums. If you can imagine Ben Webster playing tuba, you'll get the 
idea: an oasis of calm and good taste on a lovely melody with a great 
chord sequence and a great soloist displaying a musical soul.

It couldn't last for long though as the climax of every Tubarama was the 
ritual massacre of The Saints, with everyone taking a solo, so it lasted 
for about 20 minutes and ended in what sounded like an artillery 
bombardment. At the end Eli came over, shook my hand and thanked me, 
just loud enough for the banjoist to overhear, for holding the time 
together and preventing it from coming apart at the seams. As the 
banjoist was renowned for carrying grudges enthusiastically, that went 
down like lead balloon.

Happy Days??

Ken

On 27/01/2020 17:00, dixielandjazz-request at ml.islandnet.com wrote:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 18:14:41 +0000 (UTC)
> From: "ROBERT R. CALDER" <serapion at btinternet.com>
> To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 205, Issue 19
> Message-ID: <371615791.29353483.1580062481859 at mail.yahoo.com>
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> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-fUP0p0ET4
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> Bass Saxophone Duet - Sons of Bix -Russ Whitman and Spencer Clark
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> Don Ingle, of whom this site was untimely deprived, is on trombone on this performance. ebay is asking a lot of money for a vinyl LP on the Fat Cat label with among others Dick Wellstood in the band. ?
> This is more musical than the sessions Edinburgh used to feature under the title TUBARAMA -- I gather rhythm sections were not so easily recruited, perhaps with visions of the floor disappearing with lots of brass and some heroic exponents of instruments -- is it possible that if Don Cherry had been with them there might have been problems disentangling his pocket trumpet from a tangle of contrabass euphonium mouthpieces??
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> Happily him I call Bert the Bahnhof Bandsman can be consulted live and on record to demonstrate the musical possibilities of bass saxophone. Another maestro of the lower horn, not a jazzman, Gerard Hoffnung, did a hilarious skit with John Amis based (not bassed) on someone's experience of a German broadcast of serious intent which featured a lengthy lecture on an avant-garde composition which turned out to be extraordinarily short, indeed so short it still seemed short.?
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> I did once witness something similar at Ittingen, in Switzerland near the German border, in which the player of a contra-contra-bass clarinet was balanced on a bar stool positively alpine in its height, without which there wouldn't have been enough space between the player's teeth and his shoes, in fact the space lower than the soles of his? shoes where the keyed anaconda turned up to where the bell of the item was pointed toward the audience. I believe there is a Hoffnung cartoon of someone with a similar length of piping -- hilarious like most Hoffnung cartoons, and welcome to such as Marek, with a low tolerance for such sounds, in being silent.
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> I can't imagine friends will fault me for not remembering the name of the composer of the work...?
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> Robert R. Calder?
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