Young Tuba Player Gets Nod from Phila. Orchestra

by Renée Montagne and Miles Hoffman

Morning Edition, September 15, 2006 · When the Philadelphia Orchestra opens its season next week, Carol Jantsch, 21, will be anchoring its brass section. She's the orchestra's youngest member and the first woman to hold a principal tuba chair in one of the nation's top orchestras.

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Actually, it's fitting that Jantsch is so young because the tuba, invented in the 1830s, is the youngest of the brass instruments.

Renee Montagne discusses the history of the tuba with music commentator Miles Hoffman.

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It's a misconception that a tuba's weight prevents more women from playing the instrument, Hoffman says.

"When you're holding the tuba and playing it, it's the chair that you're sitting on that supports the instrument," he says. "So holding it up is not the issue.

"But it requires an enormous amount of air. And frankly it's just another one of these preconceptions, like the old notion that tuba players -- men or women -- couldn't play fast, that the instrument couldn't be made to sound virtuosic because the instrument itself was just too unwieldy."

But that perception is changing. "More and more people treat the tuba now as an instrument where anything is possible," Hoffman says. And more women are studying the tuba in conservatories around the country.