To have the opportunity to record this wonderful book of etudes for bass and contrabass tuba, was a tremendously challenging and an exciting musical journey.
I discovered this book of etudes in 1997, and since then I’ve been using them as one of my main tools, to me and my students. It aloud (allows) me to improve and develop the musical and technical skills needed to succeed in the very demanding musical postmodern society.
Through this book I’ve learned about musical flow, sound concept, stylistic domain, rhythmical (rhythmic) precision, tuning, tone, range and dynamic spectrum and control, using both bass and contrabass tubas.
The composer, by being also an experienced tuba player and a versatile musician, knows that nowadays, a modern musician needs to master and understand many musical styles, rhythmical patterns, harmonic progressions and different stylistic phrasing. With these etudes, performers will discover many parts from other famous etude books (Marco Bordogni, Vladislav Blazhevich, Otto Maenz, Verne Reynolds, Kopprach), solo literature (Ralph Vaughan Williams, Johann Sebastian Bach), chamber and orchestral music (Richard Wagner, Sergei Prokofiev, P. I. Tchaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky, Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner) and band excerpts (Gustav Holst, Paul Hindemith and Vicent Persichetti), not to mention the many jazz elements included in some of these etudes!
Sérgio Carolino