Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 2, 1994                   TAG: 9412030014
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BRINGING OUT THE BRASS

Roanoke's first ``Merry Tuba Christmas'' will bring together more than 100 tubas, sousaphones, baritones and euphoniums in what is bound to be, if not the brightest, certainly the loudest performance of holiday music this season. Lots more than just oompah here.

According to tuba teacher Robert Chernault of Leed's Music, this will be the largest performance of low brass instruments, as this musical family is called, ever assembled in Roanoke.

Tubameister Harvey Phillips, former professor at Indiana University, began organizing similar performances 20 years ago. Twenty-five or so cities across the country now hold these events.

Although the four instruments are similar, the tuba is the loudest, biggest and longest (18 feet, unwrapped) - the diesel truck of the band. But it's not what you see bringing up the rear on football fields. March master John Philip Sousa redesigned the tuba to make it easier to carry (all 28 pounds of it) and to project from the back of the band. Of course, he called it a sousaphone.

You don't have to be big to play either instrument. It's not how much hot air you have, it's how well you can get it out.

This brass with class event will be Saturday at 7 p.m. in the J.C. Penney entrance of Tanglewood Mall, Roanoke, and includes a sing-along.

Sing loudly.

And, now, today's trivia question, on a musical note: If tympani is the plural of tympani, what's the plural of euphonium?