[JPL] Jazz Tuba Player Bill Barber; Pioneered Interpretive Styles (Washington Post Obit)

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/29/AR2007062902
411.html

Jazz Tuba Player Bill Barber; Pioneered Interpretive Styles
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 30, 2007; B06

Bill Barber, 87, a musician who helped refashion the jazz tuba from its
predictable oompah passages to suit the complex melodies and rhythms of
Miles Davis and other postwar jazz modernists, died June 18 at his home in
Bronxville, N.Y. He had congestive heart failure.

A fixture of many early jazz bands, the tuba was largely reduced to a jazz
relic by the early 1930s as sound technology improved. The upright bass took
the place of the booming brass instrument.

Yet a core of post-World War II arrangers -- notably Gil Evans -- admired
the tuba's tone color possibilities. They advocated its use in small jazz
groups more as a melodic instrument than for any rhythmic pace keeping.

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz credits Mr. Barber, who took a central role
in Evans's experiments in sound with trumpeter Davis, as probably the first
tuba player "to take solos in a modern jazz style and to participate in
intricate ensemble passages."

Harvey Phillips, an emeritus music professor at Indiana University and a
leading tuba player since the 1950s, wrote this year in the journal of the
International Tuba Euphonium Association that Mr. Barber "is a legend to me
and many others for having pioneering the interpretive styles and phrasing
of the tuba in modern American jazz and for helping define the variety of
roles the tuba can play in other music disciplines."

John William Barber was born May 21, 1920, in Hornell, N.Y., in the Finger
Lakes region.

His music career began when his grade-school band needed a tuba player. "The
bandmaster said it would make me big and strong, but that hasn't happened
yet," the wiry Mr. Barber told the British publication Jazz Journal
International in 1993.

After attending the prestigious Interlochen music camp in Michigan, he
entered New York's Juilliard School of music but left in 1942 with a dozen
musician friends to join the Army during World War II.

When speaking of his experiences in Gen. George S. Patton Jr.'s Seventh Army
band in Europe, he liked saying, "I never killed anyone with my tuba."

After the war, he performed with the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra and
other symphonic groups. Dismissing his orchestral pay as "crab apples and
ice water," Mr. Barber won a coveted spot in 1947 playing with the
cliche-busting big band of Claude Thornhill.

The Thornhill group was a novelty -- a traditional swing band with two
French horns and a tuba that gave it an ethereal and romantic sound.
Although not a huge commercial success, the orchestra had a terrific
reputation among musicians and critics.

Evans was an arranger for the band and worked with Davis to reproduce the
Thornhill sound with a minimum of instrumentation. Out of this collaboration
came the dozen recordings with Davis's nonet, or nine-piece band, that made
up the 1949 "Birth of the Cool" release and is often regarded as a high mark
in the era's musical creativity.

Mr. Barber was featured on "Birth of the Cool" and later Davis albums,
including "Blue Miles," "Miles Ahead," "Porgy and Bess" and "Sketches of
Spain." He stood out on the 1957 Leonard Feather and Dick Hyman release "The
Hi-Fi Suite" for his solo on "Woofer" and also played on recordings led by
saxophonists Gigi Gryce, John Coltrane and Gerry Mulligan (another Thornhill
veteran).

Mr. Barber played with arranger Pete Rugolo's band and the experimental
Eddie Sauter-Bill Finegan outfit in the early 1950s while holding down a
three-year nighttime job playing in the pit band of the Broadway show "The
King and I."

By the early 1960s, Mr. Barber settled into a full-time career as a high
school music teacher on Long Island. He continued to perform, often with the
now-defunct Goldman Band, a historic concert group, as well as regional
symphony orchestras.

In 1992, he participated in Mulligan's Carnegie Hall concert called "Rebirth
of the Cool," which paid homage to the original "Birth of the Cool" release.
The group toured internationally and issued an album.

About that time, he told Jazz Journal International about his varied career:
"I did all sorts of jobs and strolled the tables in German and Italian
restaurants playing the tuba. Lots of musicians do these sort of jobs, and
when you work with someone you know, it's a case of 'I won't tell anyone you
were here, if you don't tell anyone I was here.' "

Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Dora Aloi Barber of Bronxville;
three children, John K. Barber of Coventry, R.I., William J. Barber of
Manhattan, N.Y., and Jill Segarra of Bronxville; nine grandchildren; and
four great-grandchildren.