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Carole Nowicke: We are commencing an interview with Robert LeBlanc. Paul Bierley is also sitting in the background and will probably open his mouth at some point.
Nowicke: Not Paul.
LeBlanc: Yes. Well, you know, if you’re only so good, you don’t do too well.
Nowicke: Did you take lessons with Richard Burkart when you were in high school?
LeBlanc: Well, when I was an undergraduate, the “then” Minneapolis Orchestra (which is now the Minnesota Orchestra) was on tour and played in Port Arthur. I called and made arrangements to take a lesson with Paul Walton, who was the tubist in the orchestra then, and who was also a Jacobs student, and also had one of the large-bore York tubas. I told him that I was looking for a tuba. This was in 1958, and there weren’t really any decent tubas made then. The only thing I had come across was a Mirafone, which was the most awful thing you can imagine. The intonation was non-existent, the sound was terrible.
LeBlanc: So, I said, “Well, OK, can I try it?” He said, “Sure.” So he shipped it to me, and from the very first sound it made, I just knew that it was pretty special. It was. I had to do some hack sawing on the slides to get the pitch up to current day standards, because I think it was probably built for A435. If you play in an orchestra anywhere you know that today they play more like A460. Jacobs said, “It’s a wonderful horn, but you have to carve all the slides down. So, we did. Actually I did some of them twice. It was wonderful.
Nowicke: You did it yourself or you took it to a shop?
Arden LeBlanc: [laughing from the other room]
LeBlanc: Oh yes, that was the first. In high school they were all Sousaphones, Conn Sousaphones.
LeBlanc: BB=. In college we had, I’m trying to think what those were. There was a Conn BB= 4 valve tuba there that I played, and it was OK, I guess, but then the Bessons came out with that compensating valve system thing, so they bought one of those, and that was OK. Finally there was a guy there who had some kind of an old tuba that I never even knew the make of that let me borrow it for a while. That was the best I’d played on so far. Then I got my own. I shudder to think now how anybody could have done anything on those instruments, but ignorance is bliss. There weren’t very many tubas made then, of course, they are still developing tubas. A lot of them are out there that obviously I wouldn’t buy, or I would have one. But I think they are coming around now that I think are pretty good.
Nowicke: Only 12 good ones?
Nowicke: No, it’s taller and thinner.
LeBlanc: Yes. In fact, he might have told you this. Some years back, the three of us played a trio at the Texas Music Educators’ convention for tubas and band, for the Lamar band. The piece was written by Paul Holmes just for that occasion. I have not seen it or heard it since.
Of course, Knaub was a whole other thing, he had a lot of experience teaching tuba. Coincidentally, one of my former students is the tuba professor at the University of Texas where Knaub was for so long. I’d like to tell you about all of my students sometime.
LeBlanc: I think Knaub was very good at taking a student and working from where that student is now, to the next thing. He was a very flexible guy, and a down-to-earth guy. Then of course Jacobs, the technical things that he had done as far as breathing–particularly breathing, the musicianship he insisted on, and even in what some might call the “least important” of orchestra parts I think was important. My experience over the years leads me to believe that too many tuba players forget about the music, and they are only concerned with the technique. In my opinion, that’s the separation point. I never wanted to be just called a tuba player, I wanted to be called a musician. Somehow a lot of people don’t get there. If you listen to the good orchestras, you hear those differences.
LeBlanc: No, I think I probably started with him about ‘58. My wife (who at that time was my fianceé) had an uncle who managed the Lyon and Healy building in Chicago and had pretty good access to orchestra tickets and a place for me to stay. So I would go to Chicago and have a lesson, and all this other stuff at the same time. For example, I was there when Reiner and the Chicago Symphony recorded Alexander Nevsky with Rosalind Elias singing. I’ll never forget that. I never will forget that. Those guys were all at their peaks, there was Herseth, and Farkas, and Jacobs, and all those guys. I actually had a lesson backstage while they were rehearsing that thing, in a part where Jacobs wasn’t to be there. We were back in some room in the back of the hall having a lesson. [laughs]
Nowicke: And not because you changed, but did his technique of teaching change over the years you studied with him?
LeBlanc: Only that he got more into the technology stuff–which is not bad, but he didn’t really need it. I don’t know whether you’ve heard this or not, but I asked him something about, “How did you ever learn all of this?” He said, “My son was a medical student” (I forget where, a school in Chicago) “He was able to get me in to use the fluoroscope and we tested all of this stuff, and we looked at it, and we watched it.” It was a pretty good scientific approach to things, it really confirmed what he had to say.
I just think that he probably had so much influence over the brass playing in this world... Just for example, Gunther Schuller was here last week. I wasn’t there, but I am good friends with Marshall Haddock, the orchestra conductor at the university, and he said they were talking about Gunther Schuller’s brass symphony that was recorded in the ‘50s–about1956 or so. He brought in all these players from all over New York who were the best players in the city. He said that they rehearsed for three months, and the entire time they were rehearsing, he said these guys are complaining. “You can’t play this, nobody can play this.” Well, shucks, we probably had three student groups at Ohio State that could play that piece.
Nowicke: It’s nice to look after your professors.
LeBlanc: Yes. It was kind of fun.
Scott MacMorran–you may not know Scott, but his brother Sande is at the University of Tennessee–or I guess he still is. Scott was my first graduate assistant here, and he taught at the University of Southern Mississippi for a couple years, then he went into business with his brother, in Bloomington (as a matter of fact). He’s now in the banking business. He was quite a good player.
And then Jeff Rideout, and you know about Jeff. He did his master’s also.
Nowicke: How many students would you have a year?
LeBlanc: No, only those who want to do that, do that.
Nowicke: In many places it is regarded as a form of punishment. But this band’s a little different.
LeBlanc: Well, it’s different in some positive ways, but it’s different in some negative ways too. It can be totally out of hand.
LeBlanc: It’s not my bag. That was one of the things, when I came to Ohio State from New York, of course everybody that I met for the first time said, “Oh, do you have anything to do with the marching band?” I said, “Nope. One of the reasons I came here was to get away from having to do anything with marching band.” [laughs]
Nowicke: An awful lot of the brass quintet music is post-1960.
Nowicke: He’s asleep.
Nowicke: How about your recordings of Paul Droste and your own recording?
Nowicke: I know you had some music that was written for you or dedicated to you.
That’s one of the things that was really kind of a miracle when I think about it, is as an undergraduate in this little podunk school down in Texas. The band director was an outstanding musician, his name was Pete Wiley, his father was director of bands at the University of Kansas for a long, long, time. Pete died in Moscow a few years back. He probably wouldn’t have died had he been in the United States, but he had a heart attack He had a publishing company called T.R.N. Publishing which was essentially for band music. He did some arrangements himself, in fact, he and I had talked about doing a series of tuba things for a teaching series which would be the things I was talking about. That is, taking some arrangements and transcriptions and things and publishing them with a recording with it–college level kind of stuff, or several different levels, but that never came to pass before he died. I learned a lot about music and conducting from him.
Nowicke: How did they all happen to be at this little school?
LeBlanc: Beats me! [laughs] I really don’t know. There were a lot of excellent students there also.
LeBlanc: Well, fairly well. It started as a junior college a long, long time before I was there. That part of Texas was fairly well off financially because of the oil industry. In my first teaching job in Dayton, Texas–I could have anything I wanted for that program. In fact, the band parents came to me and said, “What do you need instrument-wise?” I had gone through all of the inventory, the only thing I could possibly use is a contrabass clarinet or a contra alto clarinet. They said, “Well, go find what you want.” So I went and I picked out a Selmer rosewood contra alto clarinet, and they bought it. At the end of every year, I don’t know whether it was the principal or the superintendent said, “You got money left. Go find something to buy!” So I’d go into Houston and I’d look through the band literature and try to find things for band that we didn’t have in the library and it wasn’t easy to find any.
In 1976, when I started in administration at Ohio State, the entire performance division at Ohio State had less money than I had in 1959 in the Dayton Public Schools. My high school band was 80 players, the total high school population was 240. I guess that had something to do with it, plus, I think, now, I don’t know how to explain this, but I think there’s a very strong (particularly) band situation in Texas. It has a lot to do with high school football and all of that stuff, yet there are fine bands there, and there always have been, as far as I know, and there’s plenty of talent to go around.
Nowicke: Isn’t the Texas Music Educators’ Association Conference something all the big vendors go to?
LeBlanc: Absolutely.
That’s how I started every year. We had a tuba class once a week. We always started with that. I think it makes a difference. Not only does it make a difference as far as the actual intonation, but, it makes a difference in finding the tone quality. That is, if you play off-center from where the tone quality is best, then you have some problems to deal with, and you have to learn to adjust those.
The other thing that bothers me is that I see young players messing around with a bunch of different mouthpieces. I know I’m a Neanderthal about this, but I have been playing the same mouthpiece since 1967. Conn sent me a Helleberg to try, and that was the smartest thing they ever did in Central Ohio, because they probably sold 200 Conn Hellebergs as a result of sending me that thing.
Bierley: It’s difficult for me to play with Evan Whalen, who was an oboe player. He never had the foggiest idea of what a tuba could do.
LeBlanc: I have a “Bydlo” story.
LeBlanc: Yes, on the Kubelik recording, Jacobs did play it on the F tuba, but I don’t think he played it after that. That was my understanding, that one of the trombonists played it on euphonium.
LeBlanc: Yes, John Fletcher I think was a wonderful player, a wonderful musician, and a wonderful person. It was a great loss that he died so young. He was here with the Phillip Jones group some years ago, and we had a clinic here. Ronnie Bishop came down and he brought with him the tubist from one of the Australian symphonies. I forget his name–his last name was Young. We had a great time, it was a very educational thing for the students and the four of us played together and had a great time. Jim Akins was there as my teaching assistant at the time.
Nowicke: People have not been willing to do R & D.
Have you been keeping up on that one down town?
Bierley: Yes. Rubinoff? I was cleaning my second valve the other day and I found an inscription, “Antonio Stradivari 1728.”
Bierley: I’m sorry.
LeBlanc: Paul knows who I’m talking about: Jack Evans was the trombone professor and marching band director here for a long time, until, actually--Paul Droste, succeeded the guy who succeeded Jack. He was down in North Carolina judging a marching band contest and he swears this is true. He said the last band that they had before lunch was this band from a high school in North Carolina and the Sousaphones were just awful. They sounded so bad you couldn’t believe it. They were walking to go to lunch and the band director had all the Sousaphone guys right around him talking to them as they were walking by, and Jack swears he heard him say, “I told you boys not to use them valves, them is for college kids!” [laughs]
Nowicke Full immersion?
Nowicke: This is true.
LeBlanc: Well, I think it’s like everything else. First off, I think shallow, little mouthpieces are counterproductive to what you need to do as a tuba player. I think tuba players need to be able to play and sound good in the low register, because that’s what nobody else can do. Somebody else can play at the top of the staff, but you can’t play below the staff unless you got a tuba. So, consequently, you need a mouthpiece that’s large enough to do that successfully with good intonation and good sound, but you don’t want it to be so large that you can’t play in the upper register of the tuba. I think that again, that they’ve done some things with mouthpieces nowadays, some of which are OK. I just say get a good medium size tuba mouthpiece such as the large Conn Helleberg, or a Bach 7, or something of that nature and use it. If you can’t do what you need to do on that, it’s probably not the mouthpiece that needs to be fixed or replaced. [laughs] I think a lot of people make too much of it.
Another one of my Jacobs stories that I love and I’ve told a million times. In one of my lessons, after I’d gotten to know him pretty well, having been around a horn player for so long, she had the Farkas Art of Horn Playing. If you know anything about that book, you know it starts out at the beginning and it has the pre-warmup which goes for about 10 pages, it has a warmup that goes for maybe 20 pages. So I asked Jacobs once, “Does Farkas really do all that.” “Yes,” he said, “He does it religiously and he sounds great. “ I said, “OK.” He said, “But, you know what, every now and then he’s late to rehearsal and he doesn’t do it, and he sounds great.”
I think what I learned from that is that you get yourself in a frame of mind thinking you gotta do something, and you gotta do something. If you don’t think you have to do that, then you don’t have to do that. Warming up on a brass instrument is not the same thing as warming up to run the 100 yard dash. The muscles you are using are so small it’s a different ball game. All you need to do to warm up is to get things going so that you know where you are if you’re going to play a B= or a G or whatever you are going to play, know where that is. Just play a few notes and get the process going. Anything past that is practicing. That’s one of the things I tried to stress to my students. You have to know what you’re doing when you’re doing it. Are you practicing, are you warming up, are you working on triplets, are you working on range, are you working scales, know what it is you’re doing, don’t just sit there mindlessly and do stuff because you think you have to do stuff. It might not be productive. Nobody has too much time on their hands, so, figure out how to get things organized so that you can do what you have to do to get the job done.
Nowicke: So you didn’t recommend a set routine?
LeBlanc: Not really. Just get things warm. I used a thing Jacobs used which was just a little melodic thing that you play within an octave. I used some of the things of Remington’s, but again, those Remington things were practicing, they were not really warming up.
That trombone ensemble at Eastman was just such a fantastic thing. Every great trombonist in the world wanted to study with Remington, and most of them did! You put 40 of those guys on a stage (and when I say guys I include girls, there were women in there at the time) they would start their concerts with those things. Obviously that’s not warming up, but it sounded wonderful.
One of the fun things that I used to do with my kids. There was a telephone on my desk after we got into Weigel Hall. My telephone had four or five buttons, two of which meant something. Well, if they were doing an orchestral excerpt and I didn’t think it was quite right, I’d pick up the phone and punch one of those useless buttons and call Berlioz and say, “How did you really want that to go?” I said, “Did you want it like this?” and I’d have the kid play it, and say, “No, that’s not what he wants.”
The other thing I’d usually would tell the kids is that you get all tied up with all this stuff. It depends on who the kid was and what kind of language I would use. Essentially I would say, “Would you just play it?” “Just play it, don’t mess around with all this stuff.”
That was something else I got from Jacobs. He would go through all this stuff and he would talk about Herseth. My understanding (although it could be totally wrong) is that Herseth really wasn’t into all these scientific things. He would just play it. There will never be another one like Herseth. Ever. There’s a lot of pretenders and a lot of people are pretty close, but there will never be another one. Those two guys are just in another Heaven. Of course Herseth isn’t there yet, but he might as well be. He’s such a heavenly kind of player.
I guess those are the things that are important to me. I don’t know of anything else that I could add except if you have other questions. I think I was fortunate in that I was able to do a lot of different things and maintain what I had to maintain as a player fairly well. I was fortunate in that I had a gift that I didn’t have to work real hard, and I know that, and I’m grateful for that, because otherwise I would have had to spend more time doing that and not expanding to the kinds of things that I feel today were important. That’s something that I think people need to come to grips with. Like Clint Eastwood says, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” [laughs]
What’d I leave out Paul?
Bierley: I’m trying to think of something Bob, and I can’t, you’ve touched on a lot of things. Teaching, pedagogy, philosophy I think is the thing that Carole is mostly interested in. I think you’ve touched on a lot of good subjects there.
Nowicke: I love horn tech stuff too, but he’s played the same horn forever. [laughs]
LeBlanc: Well, yes, I can’t help you much there. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Bierley: I keep asking people why is everybody in town getting a better tuba than I have, can they play that many more notes?
LeBlanc: Akins has really gotten into this. He’s helped Kalison, he’s been playing a Willson, but he literally helped Kalison design that tuba. Whatever that guy’s name was, (I forget now) he improved that tuba. I bought one and I thought “Well, I’ll try this.” I tried it for a while and I sold it. It was good, but it wasn’t any better than what I had. I think this work that’s going on in Cleveland now, he will be largely responsible for making that work, because he’s really studied it and he knows what he’s doing. Most tuba players I think dabble at it. Jim studies it. Jim is a real Renaissance man, he’s an artist, I’ll show you something he did.
LeBlanc: He’s a very studious kind of guy.
Nowicke: That’s a pretty good dawg picture. I thought you were going to tell me he did that other one.
LeBlanc: No, he didn’t do that one.
Nowicke: It looks like a Wyeth.
LeBlanc: It is. That’s exactly what it is. It looks like our first Lab, Elsa. That was the mother of our super-star, Gustav Mahler.
Nowicke: Is super-star here or is he out with the trainer?
LeBlanc: He’s down in the kennel.
Nowicke: We’ll have to meet the dogs.
LeBlanc: Let me let the terriers out and you can see two terriers.
Nowicke: OK.
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