I wanted to take a moment to offer my congratulations to my brother, Kenyon Wilson. Kenyon is a tuba player and teaches low brass at University of Tennessee - Chatanooga and Austin Peay University. He also plays with several orchestras around the south. He holds a doctorate in music from University of Georgia.

Kenyon did his undergraduate work at Tennessee Tech University, which (believe it or not) is one of the top low brass schools in the world.  While he was there, he played with the Tennessee Tech Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble.  If your picture of a tuba is oom-pa-pa music or heavy, ponderous tones, I encourage you to visit their web site and listen to some of the cuts off of their new CD.  For forty years, Winston Morris, the director, has been pushing the boundaries of tuba music.

To celebrate his 40th year, Winston Morris pulled together ten of his best euphonium players and twelve of his best tuba players from those forty years.  My brother was one of the ones selected.  Morris commissioned nine new pieces of music from some of the best composers in the world.  The ensemble has been playing at several venues since November.  They finished up the tour this past weekend.  I was able to hear them when they played at The U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” Tuba-Euphonium Conference on Saturday.  From there, they headed up to New York City, where they played at Carnegie Hall on Sunday.  This was my brother’s second time playing at Carnegie Hall, and he was once the guest conductor there when they played one of his compositions.

A CD from this group featuring all nine of the compositions will be available later this year.  It has some amazing pieces on it.  One of them, Epitaph IV, is a meditation on Coventry, England, and Dresden, Germany, both of which were destroyed by bombs during WWII.  It focuses on the churches in each of those towns.  It was a very powerful piece.

One of the other pieces was not so successful (in my opinion).  The composer wrote ten different euphonium parts and twelve different tuba parts, which means that this is the only group in the world that could play this piece.  The piece could have been entitled Night Sweats, as that is the feeling it evoked in me.  It just goes to show that just because a piece can be written does not mean it should be written.

All the rest of the pieces were amazing, however.  My brother said it was the most difficult music he had every played.   Congratulations to him and to Winston Morris for pushing the boundaries of what is possible with low brass.

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