By Montague Gammon III
Extra added attractions with kids-of-all-ages appeal promise to make the very family friendly, Saturday-before-Christmas, Coastal Virginia Chamber Music presented Christmas Tubas concert a Holiday party to remember.
The audience at the Great Bridge United Methodist Church performance gets to Make & Take Holiday Ornaments, before the Tidewater Tubas play a selection of popular Christmas pieces. After an hour of pure brass tunes there’s a wassail and Christmas cookies social with the musicians.
The non-alcoholic wassail will be concocted according to “A secret, centuries-old recipe with apple cider and spices.”
That quotation came from an exchange of emails with CVCM President Adelaide Coles. (She’s also a composer, and an Adjunct Faculty member in Piano, Theory, & Composition at ODU’s F. Ludwig Diehn School of Music and Community Music Division.)
“We want to give people the opportunity to mingle and make commemorative ornaments so that they can look at their Christmas tree for years to come, and reminisce about our CVCM concert–the one that had all the Tubas! We’ll even have an instant camera for people to take photos at the concert and then decorate their photo frame & put the photo inside,” Coles wrote. (Everything one needs for ornament making will be supplied.)
Coles sent an extensive list of pieces from which the final program will be selected. These range from “Joy to the World” to the Elvis popularized “Blue Christmas” and the green of “Deck the Halls,” from the Hawaiian “Mele Kalikimaka” to its climatic opposites such as “Let it Snow,” “Polar Express” and “Winter Wonderland.” Jingling bells, without whose tintinnabulation, rocking or not, no Winter Solstice music fest could be complete – plus Rudolph and Frosty, and even mean old Mr. Grinch as well, may all get their musical mention in this swell time to hear the tubas play.
Tubas and their tenor voiced, smaller first cousins the euphoniums are not the first instruments that come to mind when Christmas carols or chamber music are mentioned. With that in mind, Coles wrote, “We love showcasing instruments that folks might think can only be used in one or two ways, when they have so many more musical possibilities.” She mentioned recent CVCM concerts that featured the Neptune Flute Quartet and the Tidewater Guitar Quartet.
Side note: This concert does not use those big brass, shoulder-borne instruments with the huge bell openings that often bear decorated cloth across those bells and which are carted by the strong backed musicians who make up the trailing edge of marching bands as they parade up avenues and down fields. Those 1892 evolutionary offshoots from what is generally called a tuba (patented 1835) are called Sousaphones, and they do not have indoor voices.
Euphonium player Ken Keller founded Tidewater Tubas after he retired as a Navy Master Chief Musician at the close of a 30 year Navy career. He and tuba player Adam Robles, another ODU Diehn School faculty member and an original member of Tidewater Tubas, are joined in this concert by Gregory Lopes on euphonium and David Yeager on tuba. Lopes and Yeager are both Navy musicians; Lopes has a considerable YouTube presence and Yeager leads multiple Navy bands
Coles added, “People are in for such a treat with this Tuba-riffic concert! We may have a surprise or two planned, including audience participation…”
Tidewater Tubas, Keller emailed, expects that “this audience will leave with a smile on their face and a song in their ear.”
Christmas Tubas
Coastal Virginia Chamber Music presents Tidewater Tubas
Saturday, Dec. 21
6:00pm Make & Take Holiday Ornaments
6:30pm Tidewater Tubas Holiday Concert
7:15pm Christmas Cookies and Wassail
Great Bridge United Methodist Church
201 Stadium Dr, Chesapeake, VA 23322
(Intersection of Battlefield Blvd and Stadium Drive)
https://www.coastalvirginiachambermusic.org
TICKETS: Adults $10 at the door, kids free with accompanying adult.
RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/share/17ssKvbYj4/
