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    Travels With My Tuba
    Travels With My Tuba
    Travels With My Tuba
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Travels With My Tuba

    By Jim Anderson

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    About this ebook

    A career in music with that most cumbersome of brass instruments, the tuba: Jim Anderson has played with most of the main orchestras in the UK and many international ones, including the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra and was a member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Wallace Collection and the London Sinfonietta. He has worked Adrian Boult, Malcolm Sergeant, Antonio Pappano, Colin Davis, George Solti, Simon Rattle, Aaron Copland, Benjamin Britten, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Leonard Bernstein, and Mariss Jansons. He was Mr Oom-pah-pah in Rainbow – one of the most famous children's programmes in the 1970s – and Tubby the Tuba, in another. He has played on a number of significant film soundtracks among them Bond films, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. and he was tuba professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for 30 years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAPS Publications
    Release dateAug 11, 2021
    ISBN9781393710967
    Travels With My Tuba

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      Book preview

      Travels With My Tuba - Jim Anderson

      INTRODUCTION

      All of my professional life I have been given money for blowing down a length of brass tubing. I have done this with most of the orchestras in the UK and many international ones, including the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra. I was a member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Wallace Collection and the London Sinfonietta.

      I have worked under the baton of many Sirs: Adrian Boult, Malcolm Sergeant, Antonio Pappano, Colin Davis, George Solti, Simon Rattle; and many non-Sirs: Aaron Copland, Benjamin Britten, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Leonard Bernstein, Mariss Jansons. I was Mr Oom-Pah-Pah in Rainbow with Bungle and Zippy ­– one of the most famous children’s programmes in the 1970s – and Tubby the Tuba, in another. I have played on the soundtrack of many films – Bond films, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings. My playing has accompanied episodes of Poirot and Mr Bean. I was the tuba professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for 30 years.

      I have been amazingly lucky, and I have had a thoroughly good time. I wanted to give my professional musician’s insight into the world of music ­before the memories disappear into the mists of my brain.

      CHAPTER 1

      OVERTURE ...

      The last notes of Mahler’s 8th Symphony, the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, faded away into that vast unique silence of the Royal Albert Hall. One thousand people – a hundred players on the stage, and a choir of nine hundred. We all held our collective breaths, knowing that we had made great music together. The conductor slowly lowered his baton. Then the total silence was shattered by the roaring applause of the six thousand-strong audience. Pierre Boulez, the conductor, gave each section a bow. Woodwind first, then percussion, strings, brass: trumpets, horns, trombones, and the tuba (me)!

      For all performers, the end of a concert is a release of anxieties and a time for reflection. I thought how lucky I was to do this remarkable job, and the bizarre way it had all started.

      ... AND BEGINNERS

      I was born in Moss Side, the youngest of three. The name suggests sylvan streams flowing through mossy banks. In fact, it was a very poor area of industrial Manchester. From infancy I suffered from bronchiectasis – a severe bronchitic complaint – and my early memories were of having to stay home whenever there were smogs, which was often. These were a mixture of toxic smoke and fog. Every winter they saw off the elderly and those with respiratory conditions: consequently, I missed a lot of school.

      My memories of my dad at that time, nine years after he had got home from the war, were that he wanted to live abroad. Canada or Tasmania featured most regularly in his conversations, but the list was long. After a while we assumed that he just liked daydreaming and talking about ‘abroad’ as some kind of fictional place of milk and honey, a place where dreams come true. He had a good job working for Kellogg’s looking after their machines. One day his boss called him in and asked if he wanted to set up and run a new factory in Cape Town. This seemed to be an answer to his prayers. He would go to Cape Town, live there for three to four months, find a house and then we would all emigrate. A much better salary, a lovelier climate. He accepted the offer.

      My mum wasn’t keen, but my dad was unstoppable. Very soon, wearing smart clothes and carrying a new suitcase, he said goodbye to us, promising he would write. I was nine, my brother fourteen and my sister eighteen.

      I had always felt close to my dad and I really missed him. For the first two months we received enthusiastic letters about lovely houses, lots of money and a great lifestyle. Then two more months passed and...nothing. I began to fear I’d never see him again.

      After five months the phone rang. My dad was at Manchester Ringway Airport. Could my mum go to collect him because he didn’t have enough money for his bus fare home. The man she brought home was thin, shabby and suitcase-less. Whatever had happened in his time away was never mentioned by anybody and remained a family mystery. Years later I asked him in private about that time. I said I reckoned he had fallen in lust with someone who had spent his cash. He looked at me, smiled and said, ‘That’s what you reckoned?’ He never said another word about it – ever. 

      With my dad home, the house was even more overcrowded. There were eight of us: my nan, two Barnado’s ladies whom my nan had taken in, my mum, dad and three kids – in a three-bedroom house! On our doctor’s recommendation – but mostly because of my lung condition – we were given a council house in Poynton, away from the polluted air. My breathing became easier, I put on weight and for the first time in my life I began to feel well.

      I took my 11-plus exam. All children had to take this exam; if they passed then they were eligible to go to a grammar school; if they failed, they were sent to a secondary modern school.

      I failed, so I went to ‘that secondary school’, as my mother called it. Both my sister and my brother had passed their 11-plus exams, and went to the grammar school. My mother never missed an opportunity to remind me of their success and my lack of it. As it transpired, failing this exam and going to ‘that school’ was to change my life.

      THE SCHOOL BAND

      I was ten when I met my first brass instrument, a trombone my brother had brought home from school. The fascination was immediate and profound. He showed me how to blow it, I tried it and loved it and I begged him to keep it.  I pleaded with my parents for a trombone, a trumpet, any brass instrument. Money was short, but they did buy me a plastic trumpet with a reed in the mouthpiece and four valves, which played the same note when pressed.

      An older boy on our street had a real trumpet and invited me round to have a go. I was just beginning to get a sense of it when he started making lewd suggestions to me, at which point I handed back the trumpet and scarpered.

      When I was fourteen, my big sister and her husband bought a large, run-down Victorian house, which I was quick to explore. Up in the attic, among the dusty photos, broken fire-guards and general junk, I found a tarnished-black, small, silver-plated tuba.

      They say timing is everything, and I found that tuba just when my school wanted to start a brass band. I washed it out in the bath and bought some silver polish. By the time I’d finished, the bath and I were covered in 40 years of blackened tarnished silver, while the battered tuba gleamed in my hands. 

      I was considered musical for two reasons: I was in the choir and I played in a skiffle group – complete with a tea-chest bass and a washboard – but our family’s true, unrecognised talent was my sister. I didn’t know this for years – not until she shyly gave me a CD that somebody had recorded of her singing, and I heard how lovely her voice was, and how expressive her phrasing.

      At the school dance, I sang and played the guitar – as did many others: it was a good shortcut into music as many of the songs of the day could be accompanied (more or less) by three chords and you didn’t need to be able to read music. These were the days of a Scotsman living in London called Lonnie Donegan. He brought us lots of energetic songs from America.

      I took my tuba to school, and played a few notes to our music master. They said they wanted to buy it, gave me £5 to give to my sister and told me that I was ‘in the band’. I was given a fingering chart – a one-octave C scale, with numbers nought to three written under each note. These denoted which of the three valves to press in order, nought being no valves, to (theoretically) get the notes. I was told to learn the scale, and that there would be a band practice every Monday. 

      Considering the fact that we were all beginners, we made good progress and after three months played our first gig, at our school’s Christmas concert.

      I’d played a solo – a song written for bass/baritone called ‘In Cellar Cool’ or ‘Drinking’ (a favourite pursuit of brass players, according to some string players). The conductor of the local village band was at the concert and asked me to join.

      By now, I wanted to play the euphonium. The euphonium, or tenor tuba, is smaller than the bass tuba: it is to the brass band what a heroic tenor is to the opera. I wanted the glamour of it – to play tunes and countermelodies, not just the bass lines like the relatively unromantic, bigger tuba. However, whenever I played the bass tuba, everybody said how great it sounded. Given that I wasn’t much good at anything else, this praise was enough to keep me tied to the bass tuba. 

      A few months later, the band gave a concert at a Salvation Army meeting house. As usual I was to play my solo, ‘Drinking’ (for the teetotal Salvation Army...). We arrived at the hall, climbed the stage, and realised there were no music stands. Joe Wyche, our headmaster, who had a fairly short fuse at the best of times, began to rant. One of the quicker-witted SA Generals jumped up and said ‘Fear not – our children will be the music stands. God will provide.’ My nerves were increased when I found my music stand was beside one of the biggest girls I had ever seen. She towered over me and smiled and winked at me all the way through my solo.

      CONTESTS

      I was really enjoying my banding, and through them, I was introduced to the world of march contests. Contesting is a strange phenomenon in the brass band world. In most contests all the bands play the same test piece. It is incredibly partisan, and seems to involve strengthening band loyalty while increasing hatred of all of the band’s competitors. At the end of competitions, when the results and scores are announced, we hear ‘We were robbed. We deserved to win.’ Strangely this animosity seems essential to the whole world of banding and somehow unites everyone. Much like football, really.

      We went on a trip to London with my local band – my first trip ever. We went to play in the annual contests for all of the bands in Britain at

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