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The WCCO Radio Tuba Quartet played very limited engagements. |
To advertise the annual TubaChristmas concert in the Twin Cities, director Carol Jensen organizes a tuba-euphonium quartet to play Christmas carols on the radio. The picture above shows the group at 7:02 a.m. in the WCCO radio studio in Minneapolis. The quartet played between 6:25 and 6:57 on Charlie Boone's weekend morning show on WCCO-AM (830), performing some of the same selections that the entire massed tuba-euphonium ensemble plays each year. (The quartet's tempos, however, were generally much faster than those of the large ensemble.)
In the picture above, legendary radio host Charlie Boone stands in the middle, surrounded by (left to right), Jerry Greupner, BBb contrabass tuba; Roger Gomol, EEb bass tuba; Carol Jensen, euphonium; and Glen Newton, euphonium.
Quartet membership for these publicity performances depends somewhat on who is available, and this particular quartet had never played together previously. So when Charlie came into the warm-up room to meet the performers and asked how long the group had been together, Jerry's answer was, "As soon as Carol gets here, it'll be zero minutes."
The name of the quartet also varies from year to year. For this 2003 performance, Carol christened the group "The WCCO Radio Tuba Quartet."
The same quartet also played carols on WCCO radio from 1:10 a.m. until 1:57 a.m. on Al Malmberg's overnight show, December 18, 2003.
| On December 23, 2006, the tuba quartet had a slightly different instrumentation. In front, Jason Martin plays an F bass tuba; behind him, Glen Newton, Carol Jensen, and Bill Haring play euphoniums. WCCO radio host Dan Geiger smiles behind them, no doubt because the group improvised an accompaniment to Dan's original Christmas song, which received its first national airplay on his show that evening, with Dan the featured vocalist. |  |