Southern Arizona Symphony hosting a Tucson first: tuba concerto

Yep, a tuba, that grandaddy of the brass instruments, that hulking beast of deep-throated harmony that weighs in near 30 pounds and requires hearty lungs and even heartier upper-body strength to handle it.

When we think of guest soloists, our minds migrate to violin, cello and piano.

There are few people in the world who play the instrument better than Frenchman Thomas Leleu, who will guest with the volunteer Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra this weekend to perform a concerto written for him.

“He plays two, three, four notes at a time and it sounds like a chorus,” SASO Music Director Linus Lerner said, touting Leleu as a bonafide virtuoso and arguably the finest tuba player performing today, a testament backed up by impressive reviews in the European press. “It’s amazing. I’m very excited to bring him to play with us.”

Leleu, 35, will perform Jean-Philippe Vanbeselaere’s “Convergences” (Danças Sinfônicas), a spirited showpiece for tuba and symphonic wind orchestra that connects the dots between European classical music and jazz. The concerto has some mind-boggling world music accents coming from the tuba, including the sound of an Aborigines didgeridoo and improvised Latin salsa.

Lerner performed the concerto with Leleu in Brazil last spring with the Orquestra Sinfônica do Rio Grande do Norte, which Lerner also conducts. It was the second time he and Leleu worked together; the first was right before the pandemic, when Leleu was part of the 2020 Gramado in Concert Festival Internacional de Música that Lerner led in his native Brazil.

“I was so impressed because I’ve never seen a tuba do what he does,” said Lerner, who guest conducts around the world and runs a critically-acclaimed opera festival in Mexico every summer that features his Tucson orchestra. “I will bring this man anywhere I can because he’s just phenomenal.”

Lerner paired “Convergences” on a program that includes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, a medley of rowdy student drinking songs written as a tongue-in-cheek thank you to the University of Breslau for giving him an honorary doctor of philosophy degree. The university cited him as being “the foremost composer of serious music in Germany” in the late 1870s and wanted him to write a piece commemorating the honor. This was surely not what they had expected from Brahms, but the piece has become one of the composer’s most beloved and most played works.

The program also includes Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances” from his iconic Broadway musical “West Side Story.”