A Very Tuba Christmas

The folks behind Occupy Santa Barbara can only wish they had thought of this: 35 tuba players will descend upon Storke Placita in downtown Santa Barbara this Saturday to prove that there’s a lot more to their instrument than oom-pah-pah and Tubby the Tuba jokes. In the pantheon of instruments that can’t get no respect, the tuba, sadly and unfairly, ranks high on the list, perhaps right behind the accordion and the tenor banjo. Harvey Philips, perhaps the world’s most famous tuba virtuoso, decided to change this reality about 30 years ago, organizing flash mobs of tuba players before the term — and the reality — in Tuba Christmas celebrations across the country. Philips died last year, but Bill Rizzi, a bass and tuba player, has been keeping Philips’s dream alive in Santa Barbara since the early 1990s.

In the early days, Rizzi and his musical coconspirators would congregate at La Cumbre Plaza, blasting away on their horns to celebrate the Christmas season. All went well until they — and the crowd they drew — moved in front of the Ann Taylor store. Store managers, presumably concerned that the crowds might impede the flow of shoppers intending to spend money, called mall security and Rizzi and his oversized musical elves were forcefully asked to cease and desist. They then sought space at Paseo Nuevo in downtown Santa Barbara, only to find that the same company that owned La Cumbre had just bought the downtown mall.

Fortune smiled upon the tuba tribe when Marty Blum and her husband Joe knocked on Rizzi’s door while walking precincts. One of the mayor’s kids, it turns out, was a standout bass player. He was also applying to the same college Rizzi attended. One thing led to the next and before you knew it, former mayor Blum had secured Storke Placita — that weird bulbous concrete isthmus linking State Street to De la Guerra Plaza — for the Tuba Christmas crowd. The show starts at noon with about 50 horn players playing a variety of instruments playing a variety of Christmas carols and holiday music. But at 12:45 p.m., it’s all tuba players and euphonium players, demonstrating how sublimely and even delicately the bottom feeders of the brass band world can play.