Press Release: A Tuba Among Strings Chamber Concert
CLEVELAND, OH – CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Ensemble Series announces our opening concert, to be held at Praxis Fiber Workshop on Friday, September 16, 2022, at 7:00 p.m. “A Tuba Among Strings” features tubist Laura Potter performing contemporary repertoire for tuba and string quartet.
Although stereotyped as the bass of a brass band, the tuba has a much broader technical and expressive range. “The brass instruments are the second most physical of all instruments,” the late tubist extraordinaire Harvey Phillips observed to broadcaster Bruce Duffie in a 1995 interview. Brass players are the only musicians other than singers who create sound with a part of the body, Phillips observed; “We simply substitute the lip for the vocal cord. When it says cantabile, that’s what we do — we sing.” Phillips commissioned and premiered over 200 works showcasing the tuba’s soloistic capabilities, including the Quintet for Tuba and Strings by Manny Albam heard on this program. “Phillips legitimized the tuba as a solo instrument, transforming its repertoire,” CityMusic’s Laura Potter explains.
In addition to Albam’s Quintet, which tubist Jim Shearer describes as “a masterpiece of modern American music that happens to feature the tuba, not simply another tuba piece” in his liner notes to Music for Tuba and String Quartet, the CityMusic program includes a tuba and string work by Danish composer Vagn Holmboe, complemented by Adagio in D Minor for string quartet by Holmboe’s contemporary, Jean Sibelius. The classical-jazz fusion elements of Manny Albam’s Quintet are echoed in Doors by Lon Chaffin, a work inspired by the work of Albuquerque photographer Jim Gale in which a photo montage of doors is synched with aural riffs on their characteristics — a blues melody for blue doors; creaking, swaying music depicting dilapidated wooden doors; and more.
Experience firsthand the tuba's singing quality in this concert of contemporary classical and classical-jazz fusion music held at Praxis Fiber Workshop, an intimate, multi-use arts space in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland.
Concert & Ticket Details
7:00 p.m., Friday, September 16, 2022, at Praxis Fiber Workshop, 15301 Waterloo Rd, Cleveland, OH 44110.
Admission is FREE.
Program details available at https://www.citymusiccleveland.org/current-season/a-tuba-among-strings
About CityMusic Cleveland
CityMusic Cleveland is a professional chamber orchestra dedicated to making classical music accessible through free concerts and innovative programming. CityMusic is committed to representing the full diversity of the classical canon, showcasing well-known composers alongside newly commissioned works and overlooked historic treasures, and intentionally featuring works by women and BIPOC composers. The 2022-23 season includes four programs performed by CityMusic’s democratic orchestra — led by concertmaster Laura Hamilton, former Principal Associate Concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra — plus seven varied chamber ensemble concerts.
About the Soloist
Laura Potter, tuba, is an active freelance performer and has played with the Indianapolis Brass Choir, the Billings Symphony (MT), the Lafayette Symphony (IN), Kansas City Brassworks, the University of Kansas Faculty Brass Quintet, the Appalachian Brass, and the Glendale Symphony (CA). In 2012 Laura provided the sonic backdrop for an interdisciplinary performance piece with glass artist Jocelyne Prince at the 2012 European Glass Context in Bornholm (Denmark). She has served on the music faculties at Indiana State University, Dickinson State University and taught courses at University of Kansas and the University of Memphis. She currently maintains an active private studio of brass students in Cleveland.
In 2012-2013 Laura was a Fulbright Research Fellow researching Nordic solo and chamber repertoire and pedagogy for brass at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was named a finalist for the 2014 Clifford Bevan Award for Excellence in Research.
Laura holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, a Master of Music from the University of Memphis Scheidt School of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Kansas. Laura’s influential teachers include Tommy Johnson, Jim Self, Scott Watson, and Jens Bjørn Larsen. Laura has been the Development Director with CityMusic Cleveland since 2018, and first performed with the orchestra that same year.
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