TubaChristmas bringing brass players to Valpo
Rob and Kris Spurgeon have been playing TubaChristmas at Valparaiso University for around four years and Sunday will be no exception.
The Portage couple, both retired, met in a community band and have been married almost 30 years. While Rob’s primary instrument is clarinet and Kris plays flute and piccolo – instruments, Rob pointed out, that are much easier to carry than a tuba – the duo will again be playing the double bell euphonium for TubaChristmas.
“We have many double bell euphoniums. My wife and I collect them,” Rob said, adding their collection of seven of the brass instruments will soon grow to nine. “I was fascinated with the double bell euphonium. They don’t make them anymore.”
The instruments, which Kris said were manufactured from the 1880s until around the 1950s, are increasingly rare. Though they don’t know the exact date of when some of their euphoniums were made, Kris said their collection spans from the 1890s to the 1920s.
The couple often loans out their instruments to other TubaChristmas participants to up their numbers.
“It’s a fun instrument to play,” Rob said.
The two bells, Kris said, provide a variation in music, “which is what it’s meant to do.”
The Spurgeons will be in the front row of the Chapel of the Resurrection on Sunday, surrounded by fellow low brass players who will adorn both themselves and their instruments with an array of Christmas decorations from holiday themed sweaters to tinsel and blinking tree lights.
The holiday concert at VU started in 2010, though the tradition, according to www.tubachristmas.com, stretches to 1974, when the first concert was played in New York City. The concerts have since spread across the globe and use the same book of traditional Christmas tunes. Harvey Phillips, a music professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, came up with the concept as a tribute to his mentor, William Bell.
“Our first one, we started with about 50 players and each year we get two or three more,” said Aimee Tomasek, chair of the art department and, with Jeff Doebler, the university’s director of music education and bands, the organizer of TubaChristmas here.
The concert now averages around 75 players. Most are from the area, though the event sometimes draws players from Illinois, and they span the range in both age and experience.
Tomasek, like many of the concert’s participants, hits more than one TubaChristmas each season, a rotation that includes the Palmer House in Chicago, which draws around 500 players.
“I did my first one in Chicago in 2009 and I had been playing the tuba for like four months,” she said, adding with so many players, she figured she could just blend in. “I’m pretty sure I was pretty bad but now I’m better.”
On her way home, she decided she and Doebler had to bring the concert to VU.
“It’s the best thing ever,” she said, adding every Christmas concert organized by the university’s music department is beautiful and spiritual, in part because of the setting in the chapel, but “it’s not the event you bring your 5-yearold to.”
TubaChristmas, which offers a singalong for its attendees and commentary from Doebler on the significance of the event and the players and their instruments, is different.
“It’s more fun to be part of something than to watch everyone else be part of something,” Tomasek said, adding that Doebler’s warmth and disposition as conductor “makes you want to come back.”
TubaChristmases, Doebler said, are like visiting national parks in that some people want to visit as many of them as they can. The players also develop a camaraderie during the concert, which offers a great opportunity.
“I love the sounds of the combinations of those low brass instruments, and many of those instruments don’t get the melody a lot,” he said, adding that’s the fun part of the concert. “With the chapel, I think the combination of those low brass instruments sounds so beautiful.”
Registration for this year’s TubaChristmas at VU begins at 1 p.m. in the chapel, with rehearsal following at 2 p.m. and the performance at 3 p.m. For more information, find the event on Facebook.