Talking tuba with Carol Jantsch

Carol Jantsch made tuba history when she became the first woman to land a principal tuba position with the august Philadelphia Orchestra. Eight years later, the 29-year-old Ohio-born, University of Michigan-educated Jantsch has hardly faded into the Verizon Hall woodwork. She's teaching at Yale and Temple, making one recording after another, and has some surprises in store for her Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital Sunday at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which will debut her recently organized tuba quartet. Yup, tuba quartet.

Q: Well, there were three tenors. Why not four tubas?

A: My dream is to have an all-tuba cover band, playing in bars - fun music with people drinking, dancing and singing along with music that happens to be played by four tubas and a drum set. There will be a taste of that in the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital. We're doing Beethoven, Debussy, and Mercury - as in Freddie Mercury.

How did this all start?

I was playing piano from age 6 ... When I was at Interlochen [Center for the Arts in Michigan] at age 9, I took this instrument exploration class. I didn't want the normal-kid instrument. After years of playing piano, here was an instrument where I only had to play one note at a time. That was easy.

You defy the stereotype that big instruments must be played by big people.

Nobody ever questioned whether I should play. Out of necessity, I developed efficiency of breath.

Loving tuba is one thing, carving out a career is another. What kept you at it?

I was so concentrated on the prize that I just worked my butt off constantly. It was an all-consuming need to be as good as possible.

What gave rise to that?

Are you my therapist? I sometimes think I have the opposite of attention deficit disorder. I can get ultra-focused. Once I'm in something, I need to finish it.

You're quite an athlete - Ultimate Frisbee, long-distance running . . . .

Because I play an athletic instrument, it's my responsibility to stay in peak physical condition. When I go running in the morning, I don't need as much time to warm up [on the tuba]. Vinyasa yoga has one breath per movement, and much of that correlates with playing.

There's a rumor out there that you auditioned in Philadelphia playing "Flight of the Bumble Bee."

Not true - though I played it on the radio show From the Top. Here, I played orchestra excerpts and part of the Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto.

Have you encountered gender discrimination?

I didn't experience that until after I got the job here. Conductors like to refer to the "gentlemen" of the brass section because it sounds old-school.

Do you ever wish your tuba was collapsible?

Thank you for not asking if I would rather play flute. People think they're so funny when they ask that. I'm dating a bass player. We're commiserating.

I've seen you try to fit it into taxi trunks - unsuccessfully.

I'm used to sitting in the back seat of a cab with my horn on my lap.

Have you ever been stranded with your tuba?

When I was 16, my mom took me to an international tuba competition in Finland. I borrowed a flight case for the instrument, and this thing was like a freaking coffin. It weighed close to 100 pounds with the horn in it. In Helsinki we had to walk several blocks with it. My mom and I were taking turns rolling this coffin down the street. It was summer and sweaty and awful.

Why dedicate yourself to such an inconvenient instrument?

My job here in the orchestra is really cool. A lot of times, you're part of the low brass section . . . but often tuba is off doing it's own thing and that's more fun for me . . . as opposed to being a section string player. If there's a tuba note, it's me. In solo stuff, I like to change people's minds about what's possible to play.

In your recital, you're playing the flute solo in Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun."

There's nothing that says you can't play the same music. I just got the Prokofiev Sonata for Flute and Piano and I've been learning the first two movements of that. Maybe I should have been a flute player - don't write that.

You've gotten a lot of mileage out of the concerto Michael Daugherty wrote for you, "Reflections on the Mississippi." You'll do it this season with the orchestra. Will there be more?

I hope to move in that direction. You need composers who . . . are enthusiastic about doing something that hasn't been done. It's hard to talk people into it, sometimes.

Your publicity photos are fabulous.

When I get a gig, they look good on a poster.