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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
 Riesentuba in 36′ B♭, Markneukirchen Music Museum | |
| Brass instrument | |
|---|---|
| Classification | |
| Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 423.231.2[1] (Valved labrosone with wide conical bore) |
| Related instruments | |
| Musicians | |
| Gerard Hoffnung | |
| Builders | |
Historical:
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The subcontrabass tuba is a rare instrument of the tuba family built an octave or more below the modern contrabass tuba. Only a very small number of these large novelty instruments have ever been built. Most are pitched in thirty-six-foot (36′) BBB♭ an octave lower than the BB♭ contrabass tuba, their fundamental (pedal) note B♭-1 corresponding to a frequency of 15 Hz, below the threshold of human hearing.
The first instrument of this sort was designed by the Paris-based instrument maker Adolphe Sax.[2] He built a bourdon saxhorn in 52′ E♭ and exhibited it at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867, although there is evidence that it was in fact built some years earlier, and possibly appeared at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.[3]
An instrument built in 36′ BBB♭ by the French instrument maker Gustave Auguste Besson was brought to the United States by Carl Fischer on the suggestion of the American bandmaster Patrick Gilmore, who planned to tour with it in 1893.[4] It is now owned by the Harvard University Band, who have restored it and feature it occasionally in their concerts.[4]
In 1956, the British musician Gerard Hoffnung used one of the two 32′ CCC subcontrabass tubas built c. 1899 by the German maker Rudolf Sander in the first of his comedic Hoffnung Music Festivals.[4] He commissioned a work for it, Variations on "Annie Laurie" by Gordon Jacob, which he performed in the festival.[5][6][7] Another in BBB♭ was made in Kraslice by Bohland & Fuchs, probably during 1910 or 1911 and destined for New York in 1913.[8][9] This tuba is playable but two players are needed: one to operate the valves, and one to blow into the mouthpiece. In 2010, a fully playable Riesentuba in 36′ BBB♭ with four rotary valves was built and resides in the Markneukirchen Musical Instrument Museum, Germany.[9]
On the other extant examples, the valve tubing was intentionally built to be non-functional; they are made to look like tubas, but are essentially giant bugles that can only play a single harmonic series.[4] One such display instrument, built by Besson, survives at the Horniman Museum in London, after spending several decades as the shop sign for Boosey & Hawkes.[10] Two instruments were built by Bohland & Fuchs in Bohemia in 1912 for Carl Fischer's New York and Chicago stores.[9] The Chicago instrument was scrapped in 1942 for the World War II war effort, and the New York instrument, nick-named "Big Carl", is still owned by Carl Fischer Music.[11]
Media related to Subcontrabass tubas at Wikimedia CommonsSource: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The subcontrabass tuba is a rare instrument of the tuba family built an octave or more below the modern contrabass tuba. Only a very small number of these large novelty instruments have ever been built. Most are pitched in thirty-six-foot (36′) BBB♭ an octave lower than the BB♭ contrabass tuba, their fundamental (pedal) note B♭-1 corresponding to a frequency of 15 Hz, below the threshold of human hearing.
The tuba (Latin, "trumpet"; UK: ; US: ) is a large brass instrument in the bass-to-contrabass range. It is a member of the valved bugles, a large and diverse family of instruments characterized by their wide conical bore and use of valves to alter pitch. The tuba usually has three or four valves, although some models have five or six. Descending from the serpent and ophicleide, the tuba was invented in Prussia by Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz and patented in 1835 as the Baß-Tuba, pitched in 12-foot (12′) F. Its five valves provided a fully chromatic contrabass instrument with a deep, full contrabass timbre. The tuba evolved through the 19th century as valves improved, and other makers contributed new designs and sizes. By the 1850s, Adolphe Sax had developed his E♭ and B♭ contrabass saxhorns which became standard in British brass bands, and Václav František Červený developed contrabass tubas in 16′ C and 18′ B♭ in the 1870s. A circular, wearable tuba called the helicon was designed for marching, and by the late 1890s was adopted and modified by John Philip Sousa as the sousaphone. The tuba is used in the symphony orchestra as the bass of the brass section, and in chamber music as the bass of the brass quintet. Tubas are standard in brass, concert, and military bands, in American marching bands and Mexican banda music (often as the sousaphone), and are occasionally used in jazz and popular music. Since the mid-20th century, the tuba has been increasingly considered as a solo instrument, and has accumulated a substantial body of chamber and solo music, as well as notable concertos by composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Gregson, and Kalevi Aho. Tuba music is written at concert pitch in bass clef, except in brass bands where E♭ and B♭ tubas are written in treble clef as transposing instruments. The range of the tuba is large, due to the different sizes of instruments in use at different times and in different regional traditions. While the range from F1 to C4 (middle C) is easily accessible on any size of tuba, contemporary solo repertoire can include the pedal range to at least B♭0 and up to at least C5. A person who plays the tuba is called a tubist or tubaist, or simply a tuba player.
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the air column inside the instrument to vibrate. Nearly all trombones use a telescoping slide mechanism to alter the pitch instead of the valves used by other brass instruments. The valve trombone is an exception, using three valves similar to those on a trumpet, and the superbone has valves and a slide. The word trombone derives from Italian tromba (trumpet) and -one (a suffix meaning 'large'), so the name means 'large trumpet'. The trombone has a predominantly cylindrical bore like the trumpet, in contrast to the more conical brass instruments like the cornet, the flugelhorn, the baritone, and the euphonium. The two most frequently encountered variants are the tenor trombone and bass trombone; when the word trombone is mentioned alone; it is mostly taken to mean the tenor. These are treated as non-transposing instruments, reading at concert pitch in bass clef, with higher notes sometimes being notated in tenor clef. They are pitched in B♭, an octave below the B♭ trumpet and an octave above the B♭ contrabass tuba. The E♭ alto trombone became less common as improvements in technique extended the upper range of the tenor, but it is regaining popularity for its lighter sonority. In British brass-band music the tenor trombone is treated as a B♭ transposing instrument, written in treble clef, and the alto trombone is written at concert pitch, usually in alto clef. A person who plays the trombone is called a trombonist or trombone player.
Gene Pokorny (born May 15, 1953) is an American tubist. He has played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since his appointment by Georg Solti in 1988. He has also played with the Israel Philharmonic, the Utah Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Pokorny has performed on several movie soundtracks including Jurassic Park, The Fugitive, and The Nightmare Before Christmas and has recorded three solo albums. In June 2000, he premiered John D. Stevens’ piece Journey – Concerto for Contrabass Tuba and Orchestra with the Chicago Symphony. He has written a chapter on orchestral auditions for the Tuba Source Book published by Indiana University Press, as well as articles for the Tuba Journal and The Instrumentalist. Pokorny has participated in numerous educational workshops, classes, and presentations, including McGill University's Brass Year program in 2009 and the annual Pokorny Brass Seminar at the University of Redlands, where he studied. He describes himself as a railfan enthusiast and a lifetime fan of The Three Stooges.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
