John Stevens Interveiw with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Tubist / Composer John Stevens

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

John D. Stevens (b. November 10, 1951, Buffalo, N.Y.) is an American composer, arranger, tubist, and brass pedagogue. He holds degrees in Music Performance (tuba) from the Eastman School of Music (1973) and Yale University (1975).

For many years Stevens was a free-lance performer in New York City. His career included membership in the Aspen Festival Orchestra, New York Tuba Quartet, and numerous other chamber ensembles. He was the original tuba soloist in some 500 performances of Barnum on Broadway. He also performed with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera stage bands, New York City Ballet and New York City Opera, many other NYC based orchestras, the San Francisco Ballet, Houston Symphony and toured and recorded with, among others, Chuck Mangione and the American Brass Quintet.

From 1981 to 1985 he was on the faculty of the University of Miami (FL) School of Music. In 1985 he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, where he served as professor of tuba/euphonium, a member of the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, and Director of the School. He performs with the Wisconsin Brass Quintet, the brass chamber ensemble in residence at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Stevens' compositions include several major works for the tuba, and a euphonium concerto. Many of his compositions are published by Swiss music publisher Editions-BIM. His most recently completed commissions include a Sonata for Bass Trombone and Piano, composed for a consortium of many of the country’s premier orchestral bass trombonists, and a suite for tuba and piano for a consortium of 20 leading tubists.

His compositional style ranges from rock and jazz to modern through-composed music. In 1997 he was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to write a tuba concerto.
In 2008, Stevens received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Tuba and Euphonium Association, the highest honor in his field. In retirement, he is now focusing on composing and is the conductor of the acclaimed Wisconsin based brass ensemble, The Isthmus Brass.

In December of 2003, John Stevens was back in Chicago for additional performances of his Tuba Concerto featuring Gene Pokorny and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Stevens graciously took time from his busy schedule to sit down with me for an interview. Portions were used three times on WNUR, and now, as he approaches his 75th birthday, I am pleased to present the entire conversation.

Bruce Duffie: You are both a performer and a composer on the tuba and the euphonium?

John Stevens: Right, and professor of tuba and euphonium at the University of Wisconsin.
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BD:   [With a wink] So why don’t we get a string quartet from you?

Stevens: [Laughs] Actually, I started to write one years ago. I was working on it during a time when I was the Director of the School of Music up there, and I just didn’t really have the time to put in. So the early sketches are still lying around some place, and I’ve never had time to go back to it.

BD:   Might it lower itself to a tuba quartet at some point?

Stevens: I actually have written many pieces for multiple tubas. There’s a CD coming out within the next couple of months on Summit Records [shown at left] by a group called the Sotto Voce Quartet, which is two euphoniums and two tubas. They’ve recorded my complete quartets, you might say. [Laughs] I suppose it won’t be complete if I write any more, but it ’s everything that I’ve written up to this point, which is about nine works. I started writing for multiple tubas when I was in graduate school at Yale with some other really fine players. We started wanting to make music together.

BD:   Are you a tuba player that composes, or are you a composer who also plays the tuba?

Stevens: By most people’s standards, I’m a tuba player who composes. My degrees are in tuba performance. The initial stages of my career were as a freelance performer in New York City, and then I became professor of tuba and euphonium at the University of Miami, and now at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where I’ve been for nineteen years.

BD:   [With mock horror] You abandoned the sunshine for the snow???

Stevens: [Smiles] Well, I grew up in Buffalo, New York, so I went back to the snow you might say!

BD:   Is it easier or harder to play the tuba in a warm climate?

Stevens: That’s an interesting question. In some ways I found it harder. It’s okay if you’re in an air conditioned hall, but if you’re practicing at home, it’s so humid that you tend to sweat more, and the horn kind of slides around on your face a little bit. So I never acclimated to it. I was there for four years and loved many aspects of about it, but I felt comfortable right away when I moved back up north. In fact, the very first piece that I wrote when I went to Madison was a brass quintet called Seasons. I titled it that because it was so inspiring to be back in a part of the country that really enjoyed the four seasons that I had grown up with.

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BD: You specialize in tuba. Is there something about playing a brass instrument that ordinary composers don’t seem to get?

Stevens: I don’t know if it’s that they don’t get it, but when I’m talking to young composers or performers who have an interest in learning more about writing and about the creative process, I always suggest to them that they start by writing something for themselves, for their own instrument, because they already know the vocabulary to some extent. They know what the instrument can do and what they can do on the instrument. It gives them a starting point where they have a chance to meet with some success as a writer. This is an excellent springboard to branching out in terms of the creative process, and widening their vocabulary in order to be able to write for other instruments, or voices. I started arranging and composing a bit when I was an undergraduate at Eastman. There I was primarily involved in the jazz part of the program. I never really studied composition formally in the way most people think of having a composition teacher and taking composition classes. I was involved in the jazz arranging program with a gentleman name Rayburn [Ray] Wright, who for years had been the music director at Radio City Music Hall. He left that job to come to Eastman and join the faculty where he was a highly distinguished teacher for many, many years. Eastman was an environment that had a lot of jazz going on, so anything that you would write would at least get read and often get performed. When I went to Yale, the music environment was different and, as I said, we had a number of tuba players there. This was right at a time when, in a few pockets in the country, people were exploring the notion of having multiple low brass instruments play in ensembles. So it was natural for me to begin to write for brass. As a tubist, I was acutely aware of the amount of literature that we had compared to other instruments...

BD: ...or lack of literature!
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Stevens: Yes, exactly. Even though I really enjoy writing for orchestra, I want to branch out and do more choral writing. The variety of composing is very attractive to me. I’ll always have a fairly strong mission to create new music for brass instruments that I hope will continue to get played. As a composer, another mission has always been to write music that audiences can enjoy listening to, and find some meaning in. Sometimes music isn’t meant to be enjoyed in the literal sense of the word, but it’s meant to be meaningful to an audience and also to the players. Ideally a performance of one of my pieces of music should be a triangle among composer, performer, and audience.

BD:   Each one being equal?

Stevens: No, but it’s a mistake to leave the audience out of the mix. For a composer to write a piece and say this is what I feel, and that I don’t really care whether anybody likes it, or it means anything to anybody or not is fine for somebody else to do, but I don’t wish to do that. ‘Entertainment’ is sometimes a dirty word in the classical end of the music profession. Some people don’t like to think of what we do as entertaining, but it depends on your definition.

BD:   This is a question I often ask. Where is the balance between the entertainment value and the artistic achievement?

Stevens: I love listening to music, so I often come to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Why am I spending my money and taking my time on a Thursday evening to come down to Orchestra Hall, and sit and listen to this music? Frankly, there are a lot of reasons. First of all, a live music performance is not just an aural event. It’s also a visual event. You’re coming into a beautiful, large, interesting building, a gorgeous space. It could be Orchestra Hall, or Symphony Hall in Boston, or Carnegie Hall in New York, but it’s very similar to walking into the world’s great cathedrals and churches. There’s a certain reverence and awe that must go through you, particularly if you have any sense of history. One is aware of all of the incredible musicians who have gone through this space. So, the person comes in, sits down, and hopefully before one note of music is sounded is enveloped into some kind of a different place than they normally occupy in their daily lives. To me the music should be an extension of that. They are coming to be entertained if part of your definition of the word is that they want to find some personal meaning in the music that they’re hearing. I’m not a musicologist, and I’m not a person who spends time tearing down music in an analytical way. But over the centuries, one of the things which has separated great composers from good ones, or serviceable ones, is this ability to connect with the people who are taking in their music. Mozart and Beethoven, for example, leap to mind. They were operating in a musical language not unlike the one that everyone else was operating in at that time, but they had the genius to find the best of that language, just like a great writer uses the same words that everybody else uses but they understand what order to put them in so that they convey something special and magical to a reader.

BD:   When you are composing, do you work at putting the notes in the right order, or do they just come out of your mind in the right order?

Stevens: The great question to composers is how they think of this stuff. Any composer asks that a lot, and I honestly don’t know how to answer that question. Most composers will tell you that in order to write successfully, and if we assume that success is actually completing the creation of a work of music, you’ve got to put the time in. You’ve got to allocate the time, schedule the time in your life, and sit down in the environment that you like to work in. I do most of my work at home in an extension of my living room where I sit at the piano, or next to the piano, and I’m looking out my front window. For me it’s a place of some tranquility, and at least a fairly reasonable source of inspiration where I can think and work in an undisturbed state. Sometimes great ideas just sort of come to you and roll out one after another, and sometimes it’s hard work! Sometimes I have to look for little keys to help me. That could be something as simple as just finding a little formula to get started on a melody, or it can come from another tune. It can come from something in my personal life, but once I can get started, then things usually roll along pretty well if I keep coming back to it. I write a little bit differently than some composers in that I don’t tend to do sketches. If I’m writing a piece for large ensembles, such as a symphony orchestra, I don’t write it in piano score and then orchestrate it later. I start at the beginning in the upper left-hand corner, and write continuously to the end of the piece, orchestrating as I go along. This is a true statement even in a multi-movement piece. In every multi-movement piece I’ve ever composed, I’ve started with the first movement and ended with the last movement, and actually composed them in the order that they’re going to be heard. This is because the natural flow in my mind is from beginning to end. I suppose in this way it’s a bit like writing a book. I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think too many authors write the middle of the book first, and then the end, and then the beginning.

BD:   Would it surprise you if you’re walking down the street one day and you get an idea that you know will plunk down in the middle of a piece two or three years from now?

Stevens: I have to say that doesn’t happen to me. Most composers listen to a lot of music, which means that they’re constantly being inspired by other people’s ideas. So, it’s actually a little bit dangerous to hoard an idea for later, because when it gets to be later, you might realize that it wasn’t your idea at all. This is one of the most challenging things about composing nowadays. Every composer wants to have their own voice. You want people to hear your music and say it sounds like it’s by John Stevens, or whoever it might be. It’s awfully difficult to write something that doesn’t sound like somebody else because so many of the wonderful ideas have been taken. Before I began composing this tuba concerto for Gene Pokorny in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I thought about four or five pieces that I wanted to listen to actively rather than passively. What I mean is not just put them on and listen to them, and enjoy them like I always do, but sit down with the score in front of me and listen to them two or three times, and really try to digest what the composer did.

BD:   Find out what makes them tick?

Stevens: Yes, a little bit. Just delve into them more deeply as a listener. I didn’t really put pencil to paper and analyze them again in a formal way, but I just watched these ideas go by, as well as listening to them go by.

BD:   To hear what works and what doesn’t?

Stevens: I’m sorry if this is an overused term, but what particularly resonates with me as a writer. There are certain composers whose styles line up with what I hope is my own voice. Shostakovich, for example, and Copland and Stravinsky. The reason I brought this up in the first place is that I listened to The Rite of Spring about three times with the score in front of me, and frankly after doing that, I was almost ready to just chuck it and say why bother? The man used fifty or sixty per cent of the great ideas of music of the twentieth century all in one work, often all at the same time. It’s just such a brilliant work of creativity and orchestration and emotion, as well as technical brilliance in terms of writing for orchestra.

BD:   So then why do you go on?

Stevens: Because we all aspire to create music that might make the same kind of impact on performers and listeners that some of these great works have made. It was marvelously inspiring for me to listen to these works, but I listened to them and then I put them away, and more or less didn’t listen to any music for about two weeks before I started composing. The last thing I wanted to do was have the first five minutes of my piece come out sounding like Shostakovich and Stravinsky and Copland specifically. Given the fact that I tend to use what people might call a neo-romantic tonal language, the music that I write is going to sound like the music of other people. Hopefully what I do is create some nuance, and use the elements of rhythm and meter and orchestration that go into a piece in way that takes these notes and gives them a certain character that people might find unique to me.
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BD:   This concerto was done a few years ago here in Chicago. When you came back to do it, did you tinker with it?

Stevens: I didn’t tinker with it at all. I did a little bit of revision after it was premiered, mostly having to do with orchestrational issues like dynamics and balance, because that’s always an issue when you’re writing for low brass. People think of the tuba as an incredibly loud instrument, but in fact it’s a very diffuse low frequency sound. Anybody who listens to music in their car, for example, knows it can be wiped out completely by a whole array of sounds. So when I first wrote the piece I devoted a lot of energy to making sure that you could hear the soloist. I had to tweak a few little things to enhance that after I had completed it, but I’ve never made what you might call a major revision. Once I finish a piece of music, it’s finished, and if I wanted to revise it in a major way, I should just simply write another piece that goes in the direction that the revision takes me. I tend to compose very slowly. I also do a lot of arranging, and I’ve noticed over the years that I can arrange rather quickly, but I compose quite slowly. What I do is revise as I go along, and that’s what takes time. There’s a lot of banging out the same things over and over on the piano, and if I’m halfway through a movement, I have to leave it for a week or two. Then when I return, I go right back to the beginning and get myself back up to speed, and often revisions are made in that context.

BD:   I want to come back to something you alluded to earlier. Is the piece done when you put the last note on the paper, or is it done when it sounds in the hall?

Stevens: I’ll tell you. There’s a wonderful moment when you put that last note on the paper, especially a big piece like this concerto which I’d been working on for a year and a half. It’s a glorious feeling as if you’ve completed that stage of it. Then there’s the copying, and making sure the score and parts are accurate and correct. These are the nitty-gritty practical details that go into taking it from a manuscript score to a score and parts that are usable by a conductor and the orchestra and a soloist. So that occupies your time. There’s a fair amount of proofreading involved, which can be a tedious job for a composer, because when you’ve finished creating a work you take a deep sigh and maybe have a glass of wine and a good meal. Then you want to get on to your next project. So, often you’re doing proofreading and editing while you’re composing something else, so you have to keep drawing yourself back to the earlier piece.

BD:   It doesn’t make you schizophrenic? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with Joseph Schwantner, Gunther Schuller, Donald Erb, and Harvey Phillips.]

Stevens: No, not really. You can look at it as two different things. I have to admit I was not exactly nervous, but certainly anxious and excited at the first rehearsal in June of 2000 when this piece was premièred, because I really hadn’t heard a note of it yet. I don’t compose at the computer, and I don’t create computerized versions of my pieces. I certainly hear them in my head, and most composers get rather good at that over the years. But it’s not the same as really hearing it for the first time.

BD:   Are you ever surprised?

Stevens: No! Well, I’ve never been really surprised in a negative way. I occasionally am positively surprised by sections of the piece where I’m not sure whether a certain spot is going to work or not, and more often than not my instincts are right, and it does work. For example, there’s a section near the end of the first movement of the Tuba Concerto where Gene comes back to the very legato melodic opening theme. It’s the very opening that he played way back at the beginning, with all this business going on underneath it. I honestly didn’t know whether that would be the right energy for the music at that time, and I had to hear it. Then I realized it’s great! This is going to work exactly as I hoped it would.

BD:   So you were relieved that it did work?

Stevens: Exactly! ‘Relieved’ is a good word! [Both laugh]

BD:   Have you basically been pleased with the performances you’ve heard of your music over the years?

Stevens: Yes, I would say I have. Much of my life has been as a performer and I often talk to my students about this. I approach composing as a performer. Because I do it all the time, I understand what a performer brings to a piece and what their expectations are. An important thing for a composer to realize is that we hear a piece of music that we write so intimately in our own heads. No matter how great a performance is, it’s never quite the same as what you hear in your head, and you have to accept that, and be flexible, and be open minded about what you consider to be good performances of your piece. Otherwise you’ll live a very bitter and unsatisfied existence. Gene plays a number of things in the concerto quite differently than I would, which is wonderful. He brings so much to the performances of this piece. Especially when you’re writing a solo work for someone else, the creation of a piece is a collaborative effort. The composer gets the ball rolling, and the performer eventually joins in and adds their own creative inspiration with their wonderful ability to play. What results is really a work that was created by both parties.

BD:   It would be different if you were writing it for yourself and then you played it?

Stevens: I don’t think I would write it any differently, but if I played it, it would sound differently. There are a number of cadenzas in the piece, and the tempo and the energy and what I bring to the music would be quite different from what Gene does, or what somebody else would do. That’s why you write cadenzas. You’re giving the performer a chance to own fifty-one percent of the company for a minute or two.

BD:   Just fifty-one, or might it be eighty percent?

Stevens: [Laughs] Well, maybe more like eighty, yes.

BD:   Are the cadenzas written out?

Stevens: They are written out with quite a bit of information about dynamics, and tempo, accelerandos, and ritardandos. But as soon as you place the word ‘cadenza’ in front of a section of music, you’re sending the message to the performer that the details are really up to them, using what’s on the page as a guideline and not as gospel.
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BD: Do performers really understand this, because teachers are always saying to play it exactly as written.

Stevens: I’m not sure all teachers say that.

BD: But you come from a jazz background.

Stevens: Yes, and perhaps that has a little something to do with it. A cadenza is like a mini unaccompanied piece. Take the Bach Cello Suites for example. If you listen to seven or eight recordings of those pieces, you will hear seven or eight different interpretations. So even exactly as written, they can vary quite a bit from performer to performer.

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BD:   You teach tuba and euphonium at the university. Are you pleased with what you hear coming out of these instruments being played by your students?

Stevens: Oh absolutely, yes! Anybody who makes their living doing what I do will tell you that each succeeding generation of players is better, and it’s been easier to track with the tuba because we’re so relatively young in terms of how long the instrument has been around, and particularly how long we’ve had any substantial literature to play. Each generation becomes more technically adept at the instrument. Ranges are wider, and highly technical figures are played with more facility. Each generation takes what the previous generation did, and says they can do better than that. They can go higher, louder, faster, softer, slower! Interestingly enough, players play the instrument in many ways greater than previous generations, but the great musicians on our instrument are as few and far between as they ever have been. This may be a controversial statement, but they may be even fewer and farther between, because, in my opinion, making technical progress on low brass instruments has been emphasized almost too much in recent years. Increasing the technical demands and writing more and more incredible and interesting music is wonderful, but sometimes we don’t think enough about phrasing and shaping the line, and creating the emotion that we need to.

BD:   [Being optimistic] Maybe that will come?

Stevens: I hope so. It is the blending of technical mastery with the inner soul that makes music what is it. Creating music, whether it’s writing or playing, is a mix of your brain and your heart, as well as your musculature. Sometimes it feels like people — students particularly — get too oriented towards the brain and forget about the heart. So one thing I emphasize in my teaching is that I would rather hear a beautiful musical phrase with a wrong note than all the right notes that aren’t saying anything.

BD:   You mentioned that each generation gets a little better technically. Are there ever times when you’re composing that you really get a wonderful idea but it’s just beyond your grasp, and you wonder if another generation will be able to do it?

Stevens: I don’t think of it exactly like that, but one thing we do as composers is try to move music in, if not a better direction, at last a different direction. For example, when I first started writing for multiple tubas, or for a single tuba, because I had come from something of a jazz background, I was really interested in the idea of getting tuba players more comfortable with improvising, with seeing chord changes in front of them, and being able to play something over those chord changes. In their study, tuba players don’t necessarily come to that as naturally as more commonly used jazz instruments do, such as trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and piano. Quite a few of my early pieces are jazz-orientated works that involve improvisation for at least one member of the ensemble. Sometimes publishers were happy to put out the music in that form, although I have at least one piece that the publisher wouldn’t print unless I wrote at least a solo that could be used by the player if they wanted to. The music has the chord changes in it, but there’s an appendix with a written-out solo that somebody who doesn’t improvise can use. At the time I was very loathe to do that, but ultimately practicality won over, as it always does, and I did do it. But I really wanted to almost force young tuba players to be willing to try improvising.

BD:   Wouldn’t reading that appendix almost be like a little lesson with you?

Stevens: I suppose it would, yes.

BD:   You give them a suggestion, and tell them to go and do it their way.

Stevens: Right, and actually we find this in classical music too. I think horn players, for example, who play the Mozart concertos, often start off by copying the cadenzas of the great soloists, such as Barry Tuckwell or Dennis Brain, or whoever it might be. [BD would also chauvinistically suggest Dale Clevenger!] Then they are encouraged by their teachers to use that as an inspiration to create their own cadenzas.

BD:   Thinking just about the tuba, are you convinced that the shades of Arnold Jacobs [principal tuba with the Chicago Symphony 1944 - 88] and Bill Bell are happy as they look down to see and hear what’s happening?

Arnold Maurice Jacobs (June 11, 1915 – October 7, 1998) was an American tubist who spent most of his career with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He held that position from 1944 until his retirement in 1988. He was considered one of the foremost brass pedagogues of his time, as well as an expert on breathing as it related to brasswind, woodwind, and vocal performance. Due to childhood illness and adult onset asthma, his lung capacity was significantly impaired. He is best remembered for his playing philosophy which he referred to as "Song and Wind."

Jacobs was born in Philadelphia, but was raised in California. The family enjoyed music and he credited his mother, a keyboard artist, for his initial interest in music. He spent his youth progressing from bugle to trumpet to trombone and finally to tuba. When he was fifteen years old, he entered Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music on a scholarship, and continued to major in tuba. After his graduation from Curtis in 1936, he played two seasons in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under Fabien Sevitzky. From 1939 until 1944, he was the tubist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner. In 1941, Jacobs toured the country with Leopold Stokowski and the All-American Youth Orchestra. He was a member of the Chicago Symphony from 1944 until his retirement in 1988.

During his forty-four year tenure with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he took temporary leave in the spring of 1949 to tour England and Scotland with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was on the faculty of Western State College's Music Camp at Gunnison, Colorado, during the early 1960s. In June 1962, he had the honor of being the first tuba player invited to play at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. He was also a founding member of the Chicago Symphony Brass Quintet, appeared as a soloist with the CSO on several occasions, and recorded the Vaughan Williams Concerto for Bass Tuba and Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony. In recognition of his outstanding career, in 2001, the Chicago Symphony's tuba chair was dedicated as the Arnold Jacobs Principal Tuba Chair, Endowed by Christine Querfeld. Jacobs was succeeded in the CSO by Gene Pokorny.

Jacobs had the reputation as both the master performer and master teacher. He taught tuba at Northwestern University, and also gave lessons on all wind instruments in his private studio. He was one of the most sought-after teachers in the world, specializing in respiratory and motivational applications for brass and woodwind instruments and voice. His students include many in orchestras and university faculties around the world. Jacobs gave lectures and clinics throughout the world. During the CSO's 1977 and 1985 Japanese tours, Jacobs presented clinics in Tokyo. In January 1978, he lectured at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital about playing wind instruments for the therapeutic treatment of asthma in children. He presented masterclasses at Northwestern University a week each summer from 1980 to 1998. The Second International Brass Congress presented its highest award to him in 1984. In 1991, he presented a clinic for the United States Marine Band in Washington D.C. He gave masterclasses as part of the Hearst Scholar program at the University of Northern Iowa and the Housewright Chair at Florida State University. The Midwest Clinic presented Jacobs their highest award, the Medal of Honor, in 1985. In 1994, The Chicago Federation of Musicians awarded him for Lifetime Achievement at the first Living Art of Music awards. During his eightieth birthday celebration in 1995, he presented a lecture to the International Brassfest at Indiana University, and the International Tuba-Euphonium Conference at Northwestern University. Northwestern's School of Music presented him the first Legends of Teaching award. Mayor Richard M. Daley proclaimed June 25, 1995, as Arnold Jacobs Day in the City of Chicago. Jacobs was given an honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the VanderCook College of Music in 1986 and DePaul University in June 1995.

William John Bell (December 25, 1902, Creston, Iowa - August 7, 1971, Perry, Iowa) was the premier player and teacher of the tuba in America during the first half of the 20th century. In 1921, he joined the band of John Philip Sousa, and from 1924 to 1937 he served as Principal Tuba with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In 1937 General Electric's David Sarnoff invited conductor Arturo Toscanini to select personnel for The NBC Symphony Orchestra. William Bell was the third musician selected by Toscanini, after his concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff and principal oboe Philip Ghignatti. In 1943, Bell became principal tubist for the New York Philharmonic.

Leopold Stokowski invited Bell to perform and narrate George Kleinsinger's "Tubby the Tuba'. In 1955, Bell performed the American premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams Concerto for Bass Tuba and Orchestra. He was professor of tuba at the Manhattan School of Music until 1961, and Indiana University from 1961 to 1971.

Bell's students included Harvey Phillips.

Stevens: I’ve certainly thought about that a lot, particularly in conjunction with this concerto. I came up as a great fan of Arnold Jacobs as a player, as a musician, as a teacher, and perhaps most importantly, as a person. I had a lot of contact with him when the Chicago Symphony would come to New York when I was working there. I went to concerts and met him afterwards, getting to know him and then actually taking about half a dozen lessons with him over the years. It was an incredible honor and privilege for me to have the chance to write a piece for Gene and for this orchestra, even though ‘Jake’ wasn’t around to hear the premiere. All these performances were played on the instrument that he used in this orchestra for many years, so I know both Gene and I feel like his presence and inspiration are still very much here for both of us. I’m always trying to move on in my music, but I’m very aware of the history of our instrument, and the people in the last century who have been so important in creating opportunities for tubists, and writers to write for our instrument.
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BD:   Let’s look at the other direction. Where is the music for tuba going? Where will it be ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred years?

Stevens: One thing that’s happened is that composers have been able to see the proliferation of wonderful players as the generations have gone on. They can see that you don’t need to be limited in either the technical things that you write for the instruments, or the styles that you use. People now do see the tuba as an instrument that can be very functional in a jazz setting, or even Rock’n’roll for that matter. One thing that I think will continue to happen is that the tuba will be more widely used in a variety of musical styles. Certainly there’s more and more solo music being written for the instrument, although the bulk of our music is in what you might call a social setting in ensembles of different sizes. The tuba has already taken a more prominent place in the chamber music world, including in the brass quintet. Over the last half of the twentieth century, it became the brass equivalent to the string quartet, and while the tuba still has a certain stereotype that brings a smile to people’s faces, we’ve really made great strides in having people take the tuba and tubists, and music for the tuba more seriously, as something that doesn’t always have to be fun and light-hearted or inspired by certain ethnicities, such as the German band, the Dixie Land Band, for example.

BD:   Is oom-pah-pah really dead?

Stevens: No, it’s not! That’s a big part of what we do. Our instrument has a variety of functions that are extremely important. We are often involved with the bass line, and that will always continue. That’s not a job which will ever be given to the piccolo, unless it’s in a satirical sense, like when the tuba plays the piccolo solo from The Stars and Stripes Forever. [Both laugh] That’s sort of the ultimate we can do!

BD:   There’s obviously a camaraderie amongst the tubist and the low brass players. Is there a camaraderie between the tubist and the double bass players? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with Donald Grantham, and Morten Lauridsen.]

Stevens: There’s a natural one in the symphony orchestra particularly. You’re so often playing the same music or talking back and forth with the same music. You’re sitting back with the basses. It’s a fair statement to say that the bassists are the tubists of the string sections, and the tubists are the bassists of the wind section.

BD:   What about the contrabassoon? [Full disclosure, BD played bassoon and contrabassoon in high school and college, having studied with Wilbur Simpson of the Chicago Symphony.]

Stevens: I just heard a funny quote last night. I don’t remember who initiated it, but it was something to the effect of any instrument that has the word ‘contra’ in front of it should never be played alone! [Both laugh] With all of the low-blown instruments — contrabassoon, tuba, bass trombone, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet — there’s an unspoken bond among these instruments that are often thought of as the underdogs of the orchestra.

BD:   Even something like a bass flute or contrabass flute?

Stevens: [Thinks a moment] I don’t know. As soon as you get up into the front rows of the orchestra, there’s a little bit more of a high class connotation no matter what tessitura of the instrument. So, I’m not sure the bass flute is quite in the club.

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BD:   Are you pleased with where you are at this point in your career?

Stevens: Oh, very much! One of the great things about teaching at a university, and particularly a really fine research university like Madison, is that I have a great deal of variety in my life. Every week I have the pleasure and privilege to teach wonderful students. I play in a very, very fine brass quintet, which is part of my job as a faculty member. I coach chamber music, I conduct my own tuba and euphonium ensemble, and a variety of other groups, and it affords me time to compose because the creative part of what I do is very important. I’ve published over fifty works, and my composing is certainly not diminishing. If anything, it is ‘crescendoing’ and ‘accelerandoing’ in areas of music that I really want to pursue. I have some wonderful commissioned projects coming up in the next few years that I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into, and I couldn’t be happier. And, of course, it’s nice that I’m just three hours up the road, so when a piece like this is played here in Chicago, it’s easy for me to be on the spot, and get a chance to hear this great orchestra, and Gene who is an incredible player and an incredible person. He is one of the great people we have in our field.

BD:   Does that encourage you to write more for him?

Stevens: Oh, certainly!

BD:   Would you write something for him just on speculation, or do you wait for him to ask for a new piece?

Stevens: Well, it’s interesting... I first learned about this commissioning project seven years ago, just before Christmas in 1996. It doesn’t seem that it was that long ago, because Gene and I both feel we’re still very much in the early stage of this piece. Gene very much wants to perform it as much as he can, and wants to see other people perform it.

BD:   Have others performed it?

Stevens: To the best of my knowledge, it has not been performed by others with symphony orchestra yet. But there’s a piano version that is published and available, and it most certainly has been performed by a number of people.

BD:   Did you do the reduction?

Stevens: I did it in conjunction with a very close friend of mine, Martha Fischer, who’s on our piano faculty at the University of Wisconsin. We got a grant from the university to collaborate on it together. It was very important for me not to just do a straight reduction, but to create a version with piano that would be challenging, as well as pianistic and playable. We made decisions about what had to be left out, and hopefully the pianist will not have to drop anything more.

Martha Fischer is professor of piano at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, where she heads the collaborative piano program. A sought-after accompanist and chamber musician, she has performed throughout the United States and Europe with many internationally recognized singers and instrumentalists. A dedicated teacher, Ms. Fischer has presented papers and served on national panels devoted to the pedagogy of collaborative piano. Her work as collaborative pianist has taken her to international festivals, symposia, and competitions in Sweden, France, and Costa Rica.

Fischer has served as Artistic and Music Director of Opera for the Young, an organization dedicated to bringing fully staged professional performances to school children throughout the nation. She has also served on the faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp.

BD:   Did you also take advantage of little things that the piano can do?

Stevens: Yes, though I really wrote it as a work for symphony orchestra with tuba soloist. It’s not a piece that’s a tuba solo with an incidental orchestral accompaniment. The orchestration and the color and utilization of the orchestra was very important to me when I composed it, so something had to be diminished in boiling it all down for the piano. I’d say there’s very little which has been added. It’s mostly been making compromises, and taking things away that simply can’t be done when you’ve got three or four different orchestral lines going on at once.

BD:   But at least you’re the one who did all that.

Stevens: Yes, exactly, and Martha was a great help both in terms of the pianistic end of it, but also in having another set of ears to decide what seemed to be the most important notes at any given time.

BD:   Do you find that the public is responding more and more to music for solo tuba, and tuba with orchestra?

Stevens: Yes, because there’s simply more of it out there, and frankly we’ve benefited from the novelty element. Luckily, more and more music directors, conductors, and people in a position to give us tubists the opportunity to perform, see it as a valuable and worthwhile thing to do, instead of having a fifth violin soloist or the eighth piano soloist this year. They can feature one of their own from the orchestra. As a tubist, I have to say that I’m particularly gratified that the Chicago Symphony is having Gene come and sit in front of the orchestra two-and-a-half years after he premiered this piece. It’s extremely gratifying to me that they’re playing my piece again, but it’s equally satisfying that they’ve chosen once again, to feature their tubist as a soloist so soon after they did the first time.

BD:   Would it be marginally less satisfying if he were playing a different concerto?

Stevens: Yes, it would be marginally less satisfying, but I would still be extremely excited about it, and I’m sure I’d still be here. Any composer will tell you that as gratifying as it is to get a premiere performance, particularly by a great orchestra like the CSO, having the piece performed for the second time is almost more satisfying, because so many new pieces get premiered and we never hear them again. Of course, I have an ally in Gene... [Both laugh]

BD:   You don’t need to name them, but do you have a few other allies around the country and around the world?

Stevens: I think so, yes. Being a tubist, I’ve been very active in the field for a long time. Most of the people in my field know me as a performer and teacher and composer, so it’s pretty hard to find a major tubist around the world that I’m not well acquainted with. I know there are a number of people who are hoping some day to play this piece, and at the moment I‘m working on a commission for euphonium and orchestra. It’s a concerto for Brian Bowman, who it’s safe to say, is the dean of euphonium playing, and somebody who’s been trying to really create a place for the euphonium in the more general music world for a long, long time.

BD:   Is he working toward the orchestra or the band?

Stevens: Brian would love to see the euphonium functioning more than it does in a symphony orchestra setting. A lot of people in the field know that I’m working on this concerto, and the first thing they ask is about the band version. Both Brian and I are committed not to have that happen for a while, to really try and give this piece a life as a concerto for euphonium and orchestra.

Brian Leslie Bowman (born July 22, 1946 in Fort Dodge, Iowa) is an American virtuoso euphonium artist and music professor who, among other things, held the principal euphonium chair and was a featured soloist with the premier concert bands of the United States Navy and Air Force. On March 28, 1976, Bowman performed the first euphonium recital at Carnegie Hall.

Bowman earned a bachelor of music degree (June 1970) and master of music degree (August 1970) from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor. He earned a doctor of musical arts from the Catholic University of America School of Music (1975).

Bowman served as a member of three United States military bands, two of which were premier ensembles for their respective services. Bowman served as solo euphonium in the United States Navy Band from 1970 to 1974. This was followed by a two-year period serving with a joint ensemble, the United States Armed Forces Bicentennial Band. He completed his career with the United States Air Force Band, serving from 1976 to 1991.

Bowman was first to perform a recital on euphonium at Carnegie Hall in New York. He also was the first guest euphonium artist at the Leonard Falcone International Tuba and Euphonium Festival at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Twin Lake, Michigan.Bowman has recorded dozens of ensemble performances in addition to six solo albums on euphonium. He has recorded many new works for euphonium, many of which were written specifically for the instrument. A review described Bowman as "a master of his instrument."

Bowman broke new ground in the American understanding of the euphonium and has been called "The most famous euphonium soloist in the world today". He became known for a "warm, velvet tone" and promoted a style of playing described as "traditional vibrato... balanced by... clean and impressive technique, from-the-heart expressiveness, and a sense of calm assurance". He advanced this new image of the instrument through his performances of new literature, premiering 4 of the 7 such works commissioned by the former Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association (TUBA) now known as the International Tuba Euphonium Association. He served as its president, and was the first euphonium player to do so. Bowman has been involved in the evolution of the instrument. He has served as a consultant for the design of euphonium mouthpieces to the Swiss-based Willson Musical Instrument Company, whose products are distributed in North America by Eastman Music Company. He has been instrumental in DEG Music Products, which released a line of mouthpieces bearing Bowman's name.

Bowman has been on the music faculty at the University of North Texas College of Music since August 1999, where he is a Regents Professor. He was head of the Brass Department at Duquesne University (1992–1999), and has served on the faculty of seven other universities. He continues to perform as a member of several ensembles and frequently serves as a guest instructor and clinician.

BD: One last question. Is being in your position as a tubist and composer for low brass, fun?

Stevens: Without question. Composing is great fun anyway, no matter what you’re doing, but the brass community in general and the low brass community in particular is made up largely of very wonderful fun loving people. It will be no news to anybody who’s listening to this [or now reading this!] that a tuba player’s idea of a good evening is to spend two or three hours making great music, and then two or three more hours at the pub having some wonderful beer with friends and colleagues, and telling some jokes, and really enjoying the personal camaraderie that we have. I feel blessed to be in such a great music field that’s populated by wonderful people.

BD: Good! Thank you for all the music that you have given us, and thank you for all that’s still to come.

Stevens: You’re very welcome. I’m still in there pitching and enjoying it very much!

See my interviews with Vincent Persichetti, Krzystof Penderecki, and William Kraft

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on December 16, 2003. Portions were broadcast on WNUR the following year, and again in 2009, and 2016. This transcription was made in 2026, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he continued his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.