August 8, 2025
This is a Mirafone Tuba and below a Yamaha baritone.
Not to size, the tuba is 2-3 times bigger than the baritone.
Today, a story about the tuba. About how the seemingly innocent and unimportant decisions you make can have a profound impact on your life, all out of proportion to the decision. About how a man, who’s name I can’t even remember, changed the direction of my life when I was twelve years old.
In a small-town school 30 miles from Rochester, I took up a musical instrument…it was a fourth-grade thing…a lot of us did. The Director of Music decided that my embouchure (the composition and shape of my lips) dictated the trombone.
In the 6th grade, the cruelest experience of my years in school. The cool kids decided they wanted to have a talent show and approached the school about it and we had a 6th grade meeting. And I wanted to play in the talent show and they tried to keep the school from including me because the trombone wasn’t cool and I wasn’t in the cheerleader/jock in crowd. I got to play, but here it is, 65 years later and it seems like yesterday.
7th grade seems the tuba player had graduated out of the middle school, and he needed a tuba player. I was physically the largest candidate among the low brass players; I was the candidate. “Sure, why not” I replied.
I was a loner. I was screamingly bored in school; I couldn’t get above a C average. So not only weird, but not so bright. And I played the tuba. My friends were in the A/V Club. So, I basically holed up with books where I found my friends (Sherlock Holmes) and my history lessons…in the 8th grade, for fun, I read, Churchill’s multi-volume history of WW2. All the while I struggled to achieve a C in history.
And the tuba. I really took to the tuba. I began taking lessons at the Eastman School of Music…Mom drove the 30 miles each way each week. Geek version of hockey Mom. By my senior year, I soloed with the high school band in a senior recital. Voted Most Musical. Now, semi-cool I guess.
Entered Eastman on a full scholarship, I just wanted to play in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and boom out Bruckner for the rest of my life.
I was nationally ranked and auditioned for the State Department’s People to People Program. They were sending a student symphony orchestra to Europe to tour, promote goodwill for America. WW2 had just ended 20 years prior. Frederick Fennell would conduct. I won the audition, beating out the other finalist from Minnesota. We barnstormed through Europe for a month, a half dozen countries, my first trip outside of the United States. Small towns and big cities alike. Played American music (Porgy and Bess) amidst the ruins, still not yet repaired.
This trip opened my eyes to the world and I never was the same again.
By the end of my sophomore year, I had had enough. To be clear, wonderful experiences. I attended a workshop with Igor Stravinsky. He had a stick he would BANG! on the wooden stage floor when we misplayed…no pressure when Stravinsky asked to you play a passage for him from Le Sacre, right? I took a jazz class from Chuck Mangione.
But the relentless pressures and monastic existence of the practice room (roughly 6×6 soundproof room) 4-5 hours per day just wasn’t where I wanted to be. So, I transferred to the main campus of the U of R (Eastman is a school of the U of Rochester) to major in English Literature. Now I couldn’t get into Rochester on my grades, because (you guessed it) I had a 2.4 GPA at Eastman. But as a transfer, I got in. Thank you, tuba.
I lost my full scholarship, but I was willing to pay that price. And so, I had to work my way through school alone. Saw an ad for a tuba player for a honky tonk banjo band…two banjos, one piano with lacquered hammers, tuba. I got the job. $25 cash per night (four sets, 45 minutes each) and I honestly can’t remember how much tax I paid on that.
One night, a new waitress comes into the Nickelodeon, and I thus met my first wife Bonnie. She was moonlighting from her job at Kodak as a film technician. That marriage didn’t work out, but we are still friends today, so I think we both wound up happy.
I graduated, taught English out of college, got rid of the tuba.
50 years later, I bought a Mirafone from Germany (the horn I played in college) and a Yamaha Neo, a professional grade baritone which is easier for me to handle now at my age, and I play both. When I’m in town, I play the Tuba Christmas Concert in Jacksonville, along with nearly 200 kids, college kids, adults and seniors, all playing tubas and baritones. Some sound.
Thus ends the tuba story film.
When you examine the arc of what happened, you can be amazed at what “Sure, why not?” can lead to.
Met my first wife. My first trip to see the world. My morphing from music to literature. My ability to attend a first-class university even though I didn’t have the grades.
By my senior year, screamingly bored with my courses (my MO), my counselor told me that if I didn’t ace my senior year…straight A’s…I wouldn’t graduate. I aced my senior year. I guess the site of the guillotine focuses the mind wonderfully. That should have clued me in that something was amiss, but I didn’t get the signal. No one ever did for me. Why would the school test a kid with a C average who played the trombone? Worse, the tuba!
And then that led to high school teaching (the only place to get a job in English) and then you had to have an MBA to continue to teach in NY so I took the GMAT and scored 98th and 99th percentile Math and English and qualified for Mensa.
“The Graduate Management Admission Test is a computer adaptive test intended to assess certain analytical, quantitative, verbal, and data literacy skills for use in admission to a graduate management program, such as a Master of Business Administration program.”
I can still feel the relief I felt to learn that maybe I wasn’t so dumb after all. Tremendous self-confidence boost.
All of this…a spouse a school a career the world and confidence. It all started with the tuba.
I’d encourage you to look at your own life and roll the film backward and see where it all started for you. We all like to believe we plan our lives, but in truth we react to what life gives us. It is completely serendipitous and worth remembering when your kid or grandchild says, I’m thinking of taking the oboe, or I’m thinking of taking a cooking class.
Maybe not casually dismiss it without some examination.
Also, I have been thinking recently that the outfits worn by Mexican Mariachi bands are just the coolest things and you get to stand with your toes pointing out and those wonderful hats and they need tuba players.
Just saying…
I always welcome thoughtful feedback. If a particular piece resonates—or raises a question—I’d be glad to hear from you. You can reach me directly at anthony@workingprofit.com
