Posted by Mark Heter on August 06, 2003 at 08:39:03:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Tastes... posted by issue on August 06, 2003 at 07:27:41:
I'm weighing in here because I'm old enough to have heard most of these guys (and others you don't mention who played great) LIVE. I was a Lincoln Center Student Award kid back in the 1960s who also haunted Carnegie Hall on his night off from the banjo band... I think I heard just about everybody who was active back then when they came to NYC.
Here's what's changed - we now have, thanks to the marketing of the conductors, instead of the music, an increasingly homogenous sound amongst orchestras - not just the brass. Back in the day, and this was even more apparent than on recordings, believe me, you could sit there blindfolded and tell which brass section was playing. These musicians were allowed to impart some musical personality to the pieces. Chicago SOUNDED like Chicago, and New York, Boston, etc. Today, there is constant pressure on the rochestra to sound like the guest conductor's latest CD, which is BS, but it's what the management wants. The result is everybody is starting to sound the same. The only one of them that seems to have maintained its personality is the Met Opera, because of the overlapping longevity of many of the musicians in the orchestra, and their unique position. Herb played his old leaky BBb Sanders there forever, and sounded GREAT. BTW, Mel Broiles played that gig on a B-flat trumpet as well. I believe the current tuba player does it on a BBb, because that fits the sound of that orchestra. It's kick to hear these guys play a concert without the singers - player for they are as good as anybody, but I digress.
Most of us in NYC regarded the Yorks as "too big", especially when economic reality dictated you could afford one big horn, MAYBE an F, BORROWED a cimbasso or contrabss trombone when you had to play one. Bill Bell was a third owner of a Martin recording bass, because that was he needed for the Goldman Band - they had four of them in those days. The rest of the time, Fred Exner used it. Lew Waldeck played Donatelli BBb Conn with the Vity Ballet - not a huge horn, either. The point is, those big horns were much more than what you needed for the Little Orchestra Society, much more than what you needed for a pit job, a society dance band job, a brass quintet gig, or a recording date. One of the best NYC freelancers from the 1960s until the present plays a Besson compensating four-valve - with the ballbuster sawed off the bottom. We played, and continue to play on horns that are versatile, not "job-specific". You have to fill that date book up to pay the rent.
He gets hired for his musicianship, not because he has a Yorkbrunner, or because of the key of his axe. That's true for most of us.
To quote Joe Novotny - "Buy a tuba, learn to play it".