ASMA KHALID, HOST:
Every year in hundreds of cities around the country, musicians have been coming together for Tuba Christmas. NPR's Neda Ulaby tells us all about that bass.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: This is the tradition's 50th year.
(SOUNDBITE OF TUBAS PLAYING "JINGLE BELLS")
ULABY: On the very first Tuba Christmas, 300 musicians showed up at the ice-skating rink at New York's Rockefeller Plaza. Since then, Tuba Christmas concerts have popped up in practically every state - Anchorage, Alaska, this year; Tombstone, Ariz.; the Big Island in Hawaii. Here's one at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF TUBAS PLAYING "JINGLE BELLS")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) In a one-horse open sleigh - hey. Jingle bells, jingle bells...
ULABY: A few years ago, overachievers in Kansas City set a Tuba Christmas world record.
STEPHANIE BRIMHALL: We played "Silent Night" for five straight minutes with 835 tubas.
ULABY: Stephanie Brimhall works with the Kansas City Symphony. I asked her what one word might best describe the experience of hearing hundreds of caroling tubas.
BRIMHALL: Rumbling (laughter) would be one.
(SOUNDBITE OF TUBAS PLAYING "SILENT NIGHT")
MIKE GOLEMO: Enveloping.
ULABY: That's Mike Golemo. He directs the band program at Iowa State University.
GOLEMO: It's this warm, low, organ kind of quality where you can feel food in your lower intestinal tract move because of the vibrations.
ULABY: Golemo says that's a good thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF TUBAS PLAYING "THE FIRST NOEL")
ULABY: So it's a chance for all kinds of members of the tuba family to take the spotlight for a change. Usually those big, fat-toned brass instruments never get to play the melody.
GOLEMO: This year we had a helicon, which is like a Civil War version of a tuba. And somebody had an ophicleide one year. Usually there's a few people that have a double bell euphonium.
ULABY: Less exotic are those white fiberglass sousaphones they play in marching bands.
GOLEMO: We call those Tupperware tubas.
ULABY: That's tuba humor. You'll hear a lot of it.
GOLEMO: We call it the heavy metal concert of the year.
(SOUNDBITE OF TUBAS PLAYING "CAROL OF THE BELLS")
CHARLES ORTEGA: My first Tuba Christmas was when I was in middle school.
ULABY: Charles Ortega has been playing at Tuba Christmases since the 1980s. This year he organized one in Pueblo, Colo. Ortega learned tuba from his father, who used to perform in a polka band in Texas.
ORTEGA: He loved playing the tuba. Even the year that he passed, he was still playing.
ULABY: Some of Ortega's very best Tuba Christmas memories, he says, were the ones where he played with his dad and his teenage son, who also plays the tuba.
ORTEGA: That was amazing. I had one on one side, one on the other, and we were all just beaming. It was great.
ULABY: It's not uncommon now for multiple generations to play in Tuba Christmas concerts. That's what happens when a tradition endures and gets bigger, broader and brassier.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TUBAS PLAYING "CAROL OF THE BELLS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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