COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (April 21, 2004) – The Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble’s spring concert this year captures the spirit of the group’s recent and most popular recording, Play That Funky Tuba Right, Boy!

Entitled The Funky Tuba Show: A Program of Jazz, Funk, Pop and Drool, the show is set for 8 p.m. on Friday, April 30, in the Wattenbarger Auditorium of Tennessee Tech University’s Bryan Fine Arts Building. It is free and open to the public.

“The program will trace the evolution of ‘popular’ music from its Dixieland jazz roots, through the Swing era and into the Big Band sound of the first half of the 1900s,” said Director R. Winston Morris. “Then it will continue with representation from the fusion jazz days and into early rock, funk and pop styles.”

Featured pieces — with some editorial adjustment — include “Tubalee – Jubalee,” “Boogie Woogie Tuba Boy” and the CD titled track, “Play That Funky Tuba Right, Boy!”

Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and the Commodores’ “Brick House” are among the funk and pop hits featured in the show.

The most recorded group of its kind in the world, the TTTE just finished recording its 14th studio album, which is planned for release this fall.

Copies of the group’s previously released recordings — including one commemorating its unprecedented sixth appearance last year at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall — will be available at the show.

Other recent TTTE performances include the Grand National Adjudicators Festival in Chattanooga and the Renaissance Center Concert and Jazz Band Festival in Dickson.

For more information, call the Bryan Fine Arts Building at 931/372-3161.

--Tracey LeFevre
This information posted 18 February 2004