[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.15″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.15″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.15″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.15.1″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
By Natalie Clare<\/b><\/p>\n
Dreaming big and having the courage to chase those dreams is important for everyone \u2014 even tubas!<\/p>\n
Tubby the Tuba<\/span><\/i><\/a> follows a heroic musical instrument who wishes he could do more in the orchestra than simply \u201coom-pah, oom-pah.\u201d When his fellow instruments catch wind of his dreams, they laugh him off, dismissive of his abilities. But with the help of new friend Mr. Frog, who shares similar musical aspirations, Tubby just might see his wish come true. This classic children\u2019s story will be brought to life for Festival audiences by the vaudeville-inspired performance company Really Inventive Stuff and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra — with<\/span> a starring role for Festival Principal Tuba Carson McTeer, of course — on July 3<\/a>. The program will also feature a playful rendition of Benjamin Britten\u2019s Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n Audiences will recall <\/span>Really Inventive Stuff<\/span><\/a>\u2019s previous performances at Colorado Music Festival in <\/span>The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Toy Symphony <\/span><\/i>in 2021, and <\/span>Peter and the Wolf<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Carnival of the Animals<\/span><\/i> in 2019. They\u2019re invited to return to Really Inventive Stuff\u2019s zany and fun-filled world once again this summer.<\/span><\/p>\n Founded by classically trained performers Sara Valentine and Michael Boudewyns, Really Inventive Stuff tours educational, family-friendly concerts alongside orchestras, conductors and musicians around the world. They combine delightful comedy, imaginative storytelling, and vaudeville sensibilities in their performance and are accompanied by live orchestral music on stage. Their productions gleefully feature puppets, an ingenious use of props and amusing interactions with musicians and audience members alike. Altogether, these ingredients make for a remarkably engaging introduction to classical music for children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe sounds of children\u2019s excitement isn\u2019t something usually associated with classical music\u2026\u201d writes Front Row Reviewers in a 2018 review of Really Inventive Stuff\u2019s rendering of <\/span>Dr. Seuss\u2019s Green Eggs and Ham, <\/span><\/i>going on to say that the show, \u201cbrought children in, gave them a reason to laugh, and taught them a thing or two about the symphony.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The story of <\/span>Tubby the Tuba <\/span><\/i>originated in the 1940s by lyricist Paul Tripp and composer George Kleinsinger. Cary O’Dell, who’s written extensively about the animated and heroic tuba, says inspiration struck during an orchestral rehearsal when a resident tubist said to Tripp and Kleinsinger, \u201cYou know, tubas can sing too.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat night, or so legend has it, Tripp went home and conceived of a deceptively simple story, to be told in music and spoken word, focusing on the plight of the largest, lowest and usually most disrespected instrument in the orchestra,\u201d O\u2019Dell writes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The determined tuba with song in his heart soon emerged as a valiant hero. <\/span>Tubby the Tuba<\/span><\/i>\u2019s themes of self-acceptance, personal redemption, and tolerance have endured for generations. It was adapted as an animated \u201cpuppetoon\u201d short film in 1947 (which was nominated for Best Animated short at the Academy Awards) and again as an animated film starring Dick Van Dyke in 1975.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to <\/span>Tubby the Tuba<\/span><\/i>, Really Inventive Stuff entertains with Britten\u2019s <\/span>Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra.<\/span><\/i> Valentine performs as a Mary Poppins-esque character named Symphonia Semi d\u2019Quaver, who hosts the orchestral performance as an introduction to the musical genre. Touting herself as a renowned \u201cOrchestra-ologist,\u201d she guides audiences through Britten\u2019s work with cheeky humor and educational storytelling. Consider it the laugh-out-loud music class you would have loved to take in grade school \u2014 only now, you can experience the fun with your whole family!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_cta button_url=”https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/concert\/family-concert-tubby-the-tuba\/” url_new_window=”on” button_text=”Buy Tickets” _builder_version=”4.15″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Really Inventive Stuff will appear at the annual Family Concert, conducted by Maurice Cohn, in Chautauqua Auditorium at 11 a.m. on Sunday, July 3. Tickets are just $10!<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_cta][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Family-Favorite Performance Company Really Inventive Stuff Returns with Tubby the Tuba & Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":271348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" by Kyle MacMillan<\/em><\/p> who sprang to fame in the 1980s with high-spirited works like Short Ride in a Fast Machine<\/em>. Once an upstart who caused waves with his controversial \u201cCNN operas\u201d like Nixon in China<\/em> and Death of Klinghoffer<\/em>, the 75-year-old composer has become a much performed and respected \u00e9minence grise in the field.<\/p> The Grammy Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winner will serve as the Colorado Music Festival\u2019s 2022 composer-in-residence and co-curator of its July 12-17 Music of Today<\/a> series, which features an array of works by 17 living composers. In addition, Adams will conduct two of his own creations: City Noir<\/em><\/a> (2009) and Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?<\/em><\/a> (2018). Unlike some composers who dabble in the pursuit, Adams has taken conducting seriously enough that he was invited by the vaunted Berlin Philharmonic to lead a slate of his works as that orchestra\u2019s composer-in-residence in 2016-17. \u201cI need to have both \u2013 that extrovert, public activity to balance the introverted and solitary nature of my composing,\u201d he said in a 2017 interview published on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra website.<\/p> Adams is part of a wave of composers in the late 20th century who rejected the iron grip that serialism exerted on the field for decades and looked to other musical styles and classical music\u2019s past for inspiration. San Francisco Chronicle<\/em> critic Joshua Kosman, for example, has written that Adams\u2019 1999 large-scale orchestral work Na\u00efve and Sentimental Music<\/em> (a title inspired by the writings of 18th-century philosopher Friedrich Schiller) \u201ctakes its rhetoric and sense of scale from the symphonies of Bruckner, Mahler and Sibelius, and its musical content from the nexus of pop melody and old-style minimalism \u00e0 la Steve Reich.\u201d<\/p> And indeed, Adams drew on the work of Reich and Philip Glass, composers a decade or so older than him. In his early pieces, he created his own brand of minimalism, which can be heard in some of the insistent, iterative passages in Nixon in China<\/em> (1985-87), one of the few contemporary operas to gain a foothold in the standard repertoire. But even though elements of minimalism recur in his music, the composer moved beyond the approach. It can be hard to pin down Adams\u2019 style, because somewhat in the same way that Stravinsky was constantly evolving, the composer changes his musical approach to fit whatever project he is working on at the time.<\/p> That can mean adding a cimbalom \u2013 a hammered dulcimer that is associated with folk music from Central Europe \u2013 to his orchestration for the 2012 oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary<\/em> or looking back to the 20th-century world of jazz-tinged orchestral music in City Noir.<\/em> \u201cA lot of artists do that,\u201d he said in a 2013 Chicago Sun-Times<\/em> interview, \u201cthey brand themselves, so the audience thinks they know what they\u2019re getting, and I completely don\u2019t want to do that. I want each piece of mine to be a complete departure or, if not complete, at least a challenge for myself and a move into the future.\u201d<\/p>Predicting musical immortality is a speculative enterprise at best, but few if any composers from our time stand a better chance of being remembered 100 years from now than John Adams...<\/h4>