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LIVE! University of Texas at Austin
Wind Symphony
Robert M Carnochan, conductor

Donald Grantham "Tuba Concerto" Premiere

 

 

 

On Tuesday, March 27 at 7:30 PM, The University of Texas Wind Symphony and UT faculty tuba soloist, Charles Villarubia, will premiere Donald Grantham's "Tuba Concerto" in Bates Recital on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin.

This twenty-minute, three-movement work is a tour de force for tuba soloist. Professor Grantham explores a wide array of tessitura, style, color and charter that Mr. Villarubia exhibits so effortlessly on his instrument. Every musician will be impressed with Mr. Villarubia's stirring and rich sense of musical line and brass players will simply be in awe of his astounding technique. This promises to be a night to remember for all who attend!

Tuba Concerto…………………………………………………………………………....Donald Grantham
for Tuba, Orchestral Winds, Percussion and Piano (2011) (b. 1947)


My Tuba Concerto--for Tuba Solo, Orchestral Winds, Percussion and Piano--is in three movements. The first movement, marked “Fiery and bold,” is a virtuosic workout featuring much interplay between the soloist and percussion, particularly the timpani. The second movement is lyric and expressive. Formally, it is a kind of continuous development: new material is added to older material without ever really replacing it, and all of the elements combine and interact throughout the entire movement. The third movement is in a much more popular and jazzy vein, and is dedicated to the memory of Tiny Parham, a jazz musician who flourished in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s and a composer whose music and scoring I particularly admire.

I wish to thank my good colleagues Robert Carnochan and Charles Villarrubia for their input and advice during the composition of the work, and to all of the members of the commissioning consortium.

Composer Donald Grantham is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony's Awards to American Composers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, three First Prizes in the NBA/William Revelli Competition, two First Prizes in the ABA/Ostwald Competition, and First Prize in the National Opera Association's Biennial Composition Competition. His music has been praised for its "elegance, sensitivity, lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and fine lyricism" in a Citation awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In recent years his works have been performed by the orchestras of Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta and the American Composers Orchestra among many others, and he has fulfilled commissions in media from solo instruments to opera. His music is published by Piquant Press, Peer-Southern, E. C. Schirmer and Mark Foster, and a number of his works have been commercially recorded. The composer resides in Austin, Texas and is Professor of Composition at the University of Texas at Austin. With Kent Kennan he is coauthor of THE TECHNIQUE OF ORCHESTRATION (Prentice-Hall).

Charles Villarrubia serves as Senior Lecturer in Chamber Music and Tuba at the Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Villarrubia is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana and a founding member of Rhythm & Brass. He received his Bachelors degree in music performance at Louisiana State University and a Masters degree in music performance from Boston University. He has been a member of the Dallas Brass, the Waterloo Festival Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. Additionally, Mr. Villarrubia is a faculty member at the Brevard Music Center where he performs with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra.

In 1984 he was awarded first prize in the T.U.B.A. orchestral competition, becoming the first individual to win that award. In addition, Mr. Villarrubia has frequently performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestras and has recorded with the latter of those ensembles.

A staunch advocate of student involvement in chamber music, Mr. Villarrubia has authored a chamber music method book called Team Play With Rhythm & Brass – a guide to making chamber music. The book gives the student and educator a blueprint on how to start and maintain a successful chamber ensemble.

He has also written articles on the subject and been a guest lecturer at the Mid-West Band and Orchestra Clinic and the Music Educators National Convention. Charles has premiered no fewer than five new works for the tuba, several of which he commissioned.

Mr. Villarrubia has appeared on four continents as a guest clinician and performer for the Yamaha Corporation and has recorded on the Telarc, Angel EMI, d’note, and Koch labels. Mr. Villarrubia has been a faculty member at Boston University, The Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, and the Longy School of Music.