How TubaChristmas, annual event open to all, embodies holiday spirit

The popular holiday extravaganza known as TubaChristmas turns 52 this year. Before it became an annual event in hundreds of cities and towns across America and around the world, it was planned as a one-off showcase of tuba-centric carols at New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza ice rink. The brainchild of tuba virtuoso Harvey Phillips (aka “Mr. Tuba”), a onetime circus band performer who spent much of his adult life in Indiana, its premiere in 1974 was a tribute to Phillips’ former teacher William Bell (born on Dec. 25 in 1902). Phillips gathered 250 tubists from coast to coast — all of whom came in at his invitation and on their own dimes.

When they finished rehearsing in a low-ceiling corridor on the second floor of the RCA Building (now the Comcast Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza), Phillips was so jazzed that he stood and declared, “Now let them talk about their oompahs!” — “them” being anyone who regarded tubas and tuba players as unserious or less than musical.

Whether at solo recitals or as part of an ensemble, Phillips was largely responsible for killing that cliché once and for all. “The man was huge in putting the instrument on the map as a solo instrument,” a colleague told the New York Times when Phillips died in 2010. “Our [repertoire] is so limited, and it would be horrible if he had not done the amount of work that he did.”

Gene Pokorny, principal tuba of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1989, is of a similar mind. He knew Phillips well, and over the decades has organized and participated in numerous TubaChristmases in and outside Chicago. Local events this season include long-running ones at the Palmer House Hilton (Dec. 20, registration at 8:30 a.m., rehearsal at 9:30 a.m., performance at 11:30 a.m.) and downtown Naperville (Dec. 6). “Occasionally, I like to show up to some of these unannounced,” Pokorny says, “just because I really like the idea of professionals and amateurs and hobbyists and everybody who happens to play a tuba, no matter what their station in life, getting together.”

Pokorny also views TubaChristmas — make that TubaChristmas^Ⓡ, these highly organized and monetized outings require registration and the use of specific arrangements — as something akin to orchestral holiday concerts in that they’re a conduit for the uninitiated who’ve only ever heard oompah-ing.  “People have probably never heard a tuba play a melody before,” he says. “They might go to a July 4th parade and hear all the flutes and the trumpets and the clarinets playing the melody. And then it comes to the drum line and the tuba is in the back, and it never gets more creative than that.

"Now all of a sudden you have a group of tuba and euphonium players, and they come to the realization that the tuba actually can play a melody. Then, when they listen to other [non-holiday] pieces, their ears might get piqued, and they’ll hear a little tuba solo here or there — in [Gershwin’s] ’An American in Paris’ or a Stravinsky ballet, or more likely something from a movie like ’Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ or ’Jaws.’

As you might imagine if you haven’t experienced TubaChristmas in person, hundreds of tubas and euphoniums (a related instrument) playing at once makes an outsize impression both musically and physically. Pokorny describes the sensation as “seismic.” “You don’t have to chew your food too well, because it kind of gets chewed for you,” he says, jokingly. “All these low vibrations are coming in. It’s kind of like hanging around Cape Canaveral during a space shot.”

David Carroll has organized and conducted Naperville’s TubaChristmas extravaganza since 2021 and first played in one at age 16. The events, he says, are about legacy as much as music. “Many children who play have parents and grandparents that played in TubaChristmas. And they continue to come back because tuba and euphonium players share a familial bond that lasts forever. The range, sonority and beauty of the tuba and euphonium are so often missed or unheard in the public that the quest to educate the masses bonds all of us in a common mission.”

For many performers and audience members, TubaChristmas is also about tradition. “Along with that tradition comes fond memories of performing the same arrangements that were played in the early days,” Carroll says. “To say that’s rare in the music world is an understatement. Add to that the fact that anyone can join the group. There are no auditions, no commitments and no age limits. Traditional choirs and orchestras are inherently exclusive, but TubaChristmas is open to anyone who plays a tuba or euphonium. 

“I can’t think of anything that encapsulates the Christmas spirit more than that.”