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Yesterday, I went to the 12:30 p.m. performance of Tuba Christmas Nashville, a gathering of 148 tuba players who'd gathered at First Baptist Church that same morning for their one and only rehearsal, and then performed an earlier concert at 11 a.m. How awesome is that?
There were so many tuba players that they couldn't all fit on the stage -- some of them were seated in front of it.
They ranged in age from eleven to eighty-something.
There were all kinds of big horns, including one with a double bell:
It was definitely family-friendly. There were parents singing to their children, children singing when they felt like it, and children getting restless during the long stretches of patter (necessary, as G. R. [the conductor] explained, because some of the performers play infrequently and thus needed resting time between pieces for their chops to recover):
Carmen Sanders, who has a big, lustrous voice, led the singalongs (one verse each):
G. R. brought out a helicon to play "Santa Wants a Tuba for Christmas." The sousaphones swayed along:
(Next time, I'll bring my zoom lens, so I can show you things like the decorations on some of the tubas. One performer had a huge wreath on the bell; another had blinking lights. Nancy Holland [a longtime participant and one of the guest conductors] wore a black Christmas sweater with Santa's face on the back.)
G. R. noted that there were a lot of music teachers on stage and urged the audience to speak up whenever there was talk about trimming out music from school budgets: "Tell them to cut that football team out and keep the band!" Donations were collected for Downtown Presbyterian's meals-for-the-homeless program and for its minister's discretionary fund, which he said is often used toward helping people obtain IDs (the lack of = factor in homelessness).
One of First Baptist's trees, at the corner of 7th and Broadway.
There were so many tuba players that they couldn't all fit on the stage -- some of them were seated in front of it.
They ranged in age from eleven to eighty-something.
There were all kinds of big horns, including one with a double bell:
It was definitely family-friendly. There were parents singing to their children, children singing when they felt like it, and children getting restless during the long stretches of patter (necessary, as G. R. [the conductor] explained, because some of the performers play infrequently and thus needed resting time between pieces for their chops to recover):
Carmen Sanders, who has a big, lustrous voice, led the singalongs (one verse each):
G. R. brought out a helicon to play "Santa Wants a Tuba for Christmas." The sousaphones swayed along:
(Next time, I'll bring my zoom lens, so I can show you things like the decorations on some of the tubas. One performer had a huge wreath on the bell; another had blinking lights. Nancy Holland [a longtime participant and one of the guest conductors] wore a black Christmas sweater with Santa's face on the back.)
G. R. noted that there were a lot of music teachers on stage and urged the audience to speak up whenever there was talk about trimming out music from school budgets: "Tell them to cut that football team out and keep the band!" Donations were collected for Downtown Presbyterian's meals-for-the-homeless program and for its minister's discretionary fund, which he said is often used toward helping people obtain IDs (the lack of = factor in homelessness).
One of First Baptist's trees, at the corner of 7th and Broadway.
