Posted by Jay Bertolet on October 28, 1999 at 21:54:01:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Life in tubadom posted by Todd on October 28, 1999 at 21:08:50:
LOL! Yeah, I remember him having a Hirsbrunner. It stuck in my head because most folks I knew back then had huge travel trunks or used gig bags when they came to auditions. Mike had his Hirsbrunner in a factory hard case with wheels, which very few folks bothered to use in those days. The audition was in July of 1985. Mike would be about my age, that being 38. I had run into him at other auditions I had taken so he was taking auditions in the early 80's. I don't remember if his horn had 4 or 5 valves but it definitely was a 4/4, silver plated Hirsbrunner CC. In fact, I don't remember him having a small horn. I think he may have come to the audition with just the CC. And it may have been what tripped him up because I remember that the finals excerpts were Petrouschka and Fantastique and the committee eliminated Mike, then took Lee and I into a room and explained that they wanted us both to play the Fantastique 4th movement again with "as much dynamic contrast as possible". I remember thinking I was pretty lucky because Mike didn't have a small tuba and Lee was using a smaller F tuba that he couldn't really belt things out on. I was using my old Yamaha 321S Eb which, even though it had a very mediocre low range, was capable of massive sound in the middle and upper range. It was kind of a slam dunk as I felt the horn I was holding was perfectly suited to the excerpts we were going to play, especially if the main criteria was going to be dynamic contrast.
Anyhow, let me know if we're talking about the same guy. I haven't seen or heard of him since the audition but I've always wondered what happened to him since he was such a hot player.