(jazzy piano music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(mellow jazz music) - [David] Hello, I'm Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

Welcome to Northeast Ohio's Arts and Culture show, "Applause."

As holiday music fills the air at this time of year, an instrument that you don't hear that much from, except in symphony halls, is taking center stage in Akron.

For more than four decades Tuba Christmas has serenaded audiences with holiday classics here and around the world.

Retired University of Akron professor, Tucker Jolly, started the concerts in Akron back in 1980.

Recently, Jolly joined me for "Applause Performances."

We got to start with the name.

That that is, in fact, your family name.

That is not branding that was devised later.

- That's correct, it's my family name.

And, you know, people have an image of me as Tucker Jolly the tuba player, but I'm six feet tall and weigh 140 pounds so I don't fit their image, usually.

But yeah, it's a family name.

- We talk about, you know, going from 50 people to 600 people.

What do you think it is that that makes this event so popular over the years, over 40 years?

- Well, I think there are a whole lot of things.

There are a lot of players that come and really enjoy getting together and playing together.

And I think once they do it on a big ensemble, it's really neat.

And once, once we moved into theaters, not many people get to play for the big crowds that we would have.

The group comes together and I think that the players themselves begin to enjoy, really enjoy the event for a lot of different reasons.

Now, the audience, I think, comes many times, I think, just to see what this is going to look like.

And I think they have probably not a great idea about what it's going to sound like 'cause they think of tubas and they think of the oom-pas and the instruments in the marching band and so forth.

I think when they come and they hear it, they are really pleasantly surprised at how wonderful it sounds.

And then the event itself, as far as the audience goes, we have them sing along with us, for many of the carols.

And I think it becomes a giant community sing-along then.

And there's not many places you can do that anymore.

And so the community really enjoys getting together, singing Christmas carols, having a good time and just really getting in the spirit of the season.

("O Come All Ye Faithful" tuba music) ("O Little Town of Bethlehem" tuba music) ("Deck the Halls" tuba music) - Tucker, you arrived at the University of Akron in 1980, began Tuba Christmas in Akron that same year, but you weren't the originator of Tuba Christmas.

It has a longer history than that.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- Yeah, so Harvey Phillips who was professor emeritus of tuba at Indiana University, wanted to commemorate his wonderful teacher, William Bell.

William Bell was one of the first really great tuba players and really well known, did one of the first solo albums for tuba.

He taught a lot of students.

He was a wonderful, warm man.

I got the pleasure of working with him for a couple of weeks one summer.

And he thought, what better way than to have Christmas music?

William Bell was born on Christmas day and he loved Christmas music.

And so, first of all, Harvey Phillips needed music and he got his good friend, composer, Alec Wilder, to arrange the music for tuba ensemble.

And in 1973 did the very first Tuba Christmas at the Rockefeller Center on the skating rink there.

And he told me, Harvey Phillips told me that when he did the very first carol, "O Come All Ye Faithful," he thought, this is going to be big.

And boy, was he ever right.

It grew from there to all of the world, more than 200 Tuba Christmases all over the world.

I don't know how many now because of COVID but- - How did you get the idea to do it in Akron?

- Well, I taught at the University of Connecticut before I came to Akron.

And one of my students was at Indiana University and he had the music and he gave me the music.

And I did a couple of small events in New Haven, Connecticut before I came to Akron.

And so when I came to Akron I thought, you know, let's try to do this.

It would be a great way for me to get to meet a lot of the players in the area and get to know maybe some of the band directors and that sort of thing.

And I thought it would be a lot of fun.

So we did the first one in 1980.

We had Ron Bishop from the Cleveland Orchestra to come down and do a clinic for us and then we had rehearsal and then we went down to Cascade Plaza and played.

And like I said, it's about 55 players and I think 250 or so in the audience.

- It's a fun and festive event obviously, but it's also a recruiting tool.

- Well, only in the sense that it gets people familiar with coming to the university, familiar with me.

And now it with Dr. Blaha.

And so I used it in the sense that it was more of a get to know you than an actual recruiting tool for contacting students, but after they come to Tuba Christmas, if I were to contact them, then they'd have an idea of who I was.

And that was how it worked back then.

- Talk about how the event has grown over the years.

I mean, you've literally outgrown one venue after another.

- Yes, well, you know that after the first year we actually moved to Quaker Square, which was a very, very popular place in Akron at that time.

And the first concert we had at Quaker Square, we did it in a hallway and we had about 90 players and people were walking by and they stopped and listened to them.

The next year we needed to move to a bigger space so we moved to the lobby and we had 135 players and the lobby was packed.

We moved to the ballroom and not only was the ballroom packed, but so was the lobby.

And they said we can't do it anymore.

So the next year the best venue for us was the actual lobby of A.J.

Thomas Hall.

There's an 11 second reverb in that lobby.

If go in there, you still hear Tuba Christmas.

And then at that concert where Patty Eddy and Ron Siroid, and they offered the Civic Theater, which proved to be a wonderful place.

It was very nostalgic to walk in the Civic Theater and it grew there to the point we started with one concert there and then finally they said, we've got to do two.

And then we were gone for one year in 2001 when we were at the Jar Arena because they were renovating the Civic.

And then 2002 is when we had the 600 players.

And there were, the Civic seats 2,400 people and they turned away about 800 to a thousand people for the first show in several hundred for the second.

And we were able to move to A.J.

Thomas, which, while it's a wonderful space, not quite as nostalgic maybe as the Civic, but logistically it was a much better deal for us.

We could get all the players on the stage.

At the Civic we had to put them in the seats because there were so many of them and A.J.

has been great.

("Silent Night" tuba music) ("Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" tuba music) (jazzy upbeat music) - [Announcer] After being on hiatus last year, the 2021 Tri-C Jazz Fest returns this year to in-person programming.

Join us next time on "Applause" as we welcome the Tri-C Jazz Fest All-Stars, bassist, Christian McBride; trumpeter, Dominic Faranachi; guitarist, Dan Wilson and drummer, Jerome Jennings.

All this and more on the next round of "Applause."

- [David] Since 1980, the University of Akron School of Music has hosted the holiday favorite, Tuba Christmas.

The festive event features the sounds of hundreds of tubas, euphoniums and sousaphones.

This year, for the first time in decades, Tuba Christmas took place outdoors on the U of A campus due to the ongoing pandemic.

Tuba Christmas Akron founder, Tucker Jolly, joined me recently, along with University of Akron associate professor, Christopher Blaha and senior Candice Stalczynski.

Chris, since Tucker's retirement in 2013, you stepped into lead the University's tuba department as professor of tuba and euphonium and you also play something known as the sousaphone.

We've been thrown around a lot of tuba names.

Can you slip on your professor's hat for us a few minutes and share a little education about this particular, these sorts, this group of instruments, I should say.

- Sure, I'd be happy to.

A tuba is the instrument that you'll see in symphony orchestras and in concert bands.

Also sitting back here over my shoulder, where you hold it in your lap when you play.

A euphonium or a baritone is basically a tuba that got left in the dryer for too long.

And so it's a smaller instrument.

It sounds up an active from where the tuba does, but they blend together beautifully and function really similarly.

So then a sousaphone is a tuba that was designed to be worn and so we marched with, so instead of being an instrument that you hold in your lap and sit in front of you, it's coiled in a shape where you actually, it wraps around your upper body and rests on your left shoulder with a bell that points towards the front.

So if you're in a parade or in a marching band or an ensemble like that, then the sound goes forward and out towards the people who are listening to it.

- And Candace, you play both tuba and euphonium.

I understand that it was your grandmother who helped lead you down this path.

Tell us about her and how she inspired you as a musician.

- Yeah, my grandma, she still has a wonderful person.

She actually raised me and my siblings and she had taught us all how to play euphonium at a very young age.

And that's when she started kind of introducing us to Tuba Christmas every single year.

And I'm honestly so blessed just to have her, like, taking us to all these musical events and introducing us to basically the foundation of why I'm even here right now and to this day.

But yeah, she, she would load us all up, all us kids into the car and take us to Tuba Christmas every single year.

And we would, it was such a fun time and it was a wonderful gathering.

And you've got your classic Krispy Kreme donut, and some apple cider as well.

And it's just, I have really good memories with her and going to Tuba Christmas.

- And Chris, you also helped lead Tuba Christmas, which Tucker has, the way he describes it, quote, I'm seeing like moving a barge.

Talk about, from your perspective, the sheer size of that performance and what it's like conducting all those players.

- I mean, I think Tucker's description is pretty spot on just because you're dealing with so many players and such a low, dense sound.

If it was two players or one player or even five players, ensembles of that size can adjust and adapt really quickly.

But when you're dealing with hundreds and hundreds, it does take a little bit more effort, a little bit more patience to have adjustments happen.

But I mean, one of the things that struck me the first time I heard Akron's Tuba Christmas, which was my first year teaching here, not only do you hear the ensemble playing, but you feel it, you feel the floor vibrate and you just feel all that resonance kind of just take over your body.

So oftentimes, because there are so many players on stage, we don't conduct from a podium, we conduct from a scaffolding.

So when you climb up there and the players began to play, you can feel the whole thing shaking and vibrating.

- Oh my goodness.

- The first time I felt that I was definitely scared half to death.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

("Away in a Manger" tuba music) ("Jingle Bells" tuba music) - Chris, Tucker told us earlier that he thinks, you know, he talks about why he thinks Tuba Christmas is so popular, but you have a different take.

- Well, I mean, I agree with everything that Tucker said, especially as someone who grew up going to Tuba Christmas in Columbus.

It's amazing because Akron is not as big of a city as Columbus, but the Tuba Christmas here is just on a whole nother level, all due respect to the folks at Columbus, of course.

But I think that, you know, a lot of people come for two major reasons.

One, I think there's an excellent musical product.

Having watched Tucker in rehearsal and following his lead when I'm rehearsing the ensemble, we certainly don't settle for less than everybody's best effort and best playing.

So, you know, people know the difference between average entertainment and excellent entertainment, and they certainly wanna give their time and their attention to stuff that is rewarding to listen to and rewarding to participate in.

So I think because it's a high-level, excellent musical product, I think that draws a lot of people, both to perform and to come listen.

But you know, you have a gentleman here, Tucker Jolly, whose life work has been working for this university and developing a kind of strong connection with the community and many people come for him.

And I think it's wonderful because I think it's reflection of the investment he's made in others and the fond memories that people have throughout the years.

Not only as students, but as community members, as professional musicians and people just wanting to come back and see him again year after year after year.

("O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" tuba music) ("Angels We Have Heard on High" tuba music) ("Joy to the World" tuba music) - [David] I hope you enjoyed the seasonal sounds from a sampling of the many players for Akron's Tuba Christmas.

And that's it for today's show.

For more Arts and Culture stories, connect with us online at arts.ideastream.org.

I'm David C. Barnett.

Ho, ho, hoping to see you next week for another round of "Applause."

("Silent Night" tuba music) (whirring electronic music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.