by Hugh Wilikofsky
In 2017 I caught a performance of John Luther Adams’ Across the Distance in Philadelphia at a pier along the Delaware River, in the shadow of the Ben Franklin Bridge. A couple dozen horn players spread out across the space, changing their position from time to time. The audience was invited to sit in place and let the performance shift around them, or get up and explore that shift at their own pace. Gradually the players dispersed and we were left to the roar of the New Jersey Transit train high above us. We were no longer an audience, just a bunch of strangers visiting the pier on a Fall afternoon.
I was reminded of this piece as I watched The Viaduct Tuba Trio’s eponymous performance of Scottish composer Bill Wells’ “Fanfare for Three Tubas” as part of the 2018 Loch Shiel Festival for reasons that are probably obvious. It’s outside under a bridge (or at least a relative of a bridge). The musicians move about the open-ended performance space. Horns. Etc. In fact, Across the Distance was first performed somewhere in the hills of rural Scotland as well. Despite all the similarities, the two pieces feel quite opposite in spirit. Adams’ work largely centers on environmental themes and seeks to accentuate the natural, but in Wells’ “Fanfare” there’s a comforting sense of finding camaraderie in a vast expanse. The players begin apart, unseen, calling out in these yearning sighs and gradually hone in on each other. It’s not until the halfway point that they convene under an arch and the theme turns spirited, glorious.
That particular performance featured three pieces composed by Wells, enough to earn him and the trio a commission from Glasgow’s Counterflows festival. The Viaduct Tuba Trio Plays the Music of Bill Wells is the direct result of that commission, a collection of horn pieces that showcase Wells’ sensitivity and wit as a composer, as well as the richness and range of the tuba in a way I’ve rarely, if ever, heard before. It helps that the trio—Antony Hook, Danielle Price and Mark Reynolds—have such clear mastery of their instruments and a dexterity that is viscerally felt thanks to the album’s incredibly tactile production. It all points to the humanistic bent of Wells’ work, where pieces feel more cooperative than, say, conversational, yet each player’s voice still comes through distinctly, not blended into or obscured by the whole. It’s an approach I find particularly palliative in these isolating times.
Opening with that same first piece they performed under the viaduct, things kick off with a charming sense of pomp one might expect from the tuba. I feel like the instrument’s two most stereotypical modes are pomp and comic, and while we certainly get a little bit of both over the course of the album, plenty of time is given to pieces of contemplative beauty. “Stud in the Muck” had me marveling at the buttery tones one can draw out of the horn, as the one running the lower register could’ve fooled me into thinking it was a bowed bass. That piece has a lovely loping pace to it, and a push and pull between its rhythm keepers that’s deeply soothing. We hear that effect again, even more apparent later on in “Unhealthy Exercise,” and the timing of each players’ sharp inhalations drives this sense of give and take even further. I didn’t really register them on first listen, but on repeat came to appreciate their presence as a subtly grounding element.
When those moments of comedy do arrive though, they’re madcap and winning. “The Midges” is a cover of a hammy Kenneth McKellar song about the swarming flies that are apparently particularly ferocious in Scotland. Wells’ version kicks up the tempo and finds two of the tubas building off its bassline while the other takes over McKellar’s melody. Then the midges arrive. Glasgow’s Gorbals Youth Brass Band fills this role, whining, moaning, mewing, ululating into their instruments in all manner of goofy ways, eventually overtaking the trio. I’m finding it hard to be truly delighted by anything these days, but this one had me busting out laughing. “Hydra Mini / Jalopy” is another stand out for the irreverent sounds each player draws from their instrument, as well as the inclusion of the Gorbals band. Opening with a particularly percussive solo and gradually descending into buzzing, burbling, screeching chaos, it ably evokes the titular clunker. I couldn’t help but picture some kind of dark early Iwerks short, one of those wiggly anthropomorphized cars careening towards oblivion.
That sense of descent is reinforced by the tracks that follow, which stand as the album’s most melancholy. The melody of “Chorale 4K” has a downward trajectory that feels particularly mournful, but a tenderness persists in its commiserating accompaniment. I was particularly taken with “Slow Worm” and the way those flourishes that rise just past the halfway point seem to paw at the high notes instead of hitting them in some resounding tenor. It had me thinking about an interview I’d read with Wells in which he spoke on his shift from Glasgow’s jazz scene to its indie scene. The former, he said, is far too preoccupied with technical virtuosity, whereas the latter “go for the emotional side, which is obviously what it’s all about anyway.” Like his occasional collaborators Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Wells has an intuitive grasp on the transcendence to be found in a musical smudge, further evidenced by the album’s closing track. Though it ends on a similar note of grandeur as it opened with, rather than the sense of entreaty that drove “Fanfare,” “Stone Throw Dream Anthem” marches with a well-earned air of triumph, made all the more endearing by its minute touches of discordance.
Maybe it’s just the influence of that performance video, but the tuba’s sound strikes me as particularly fitting for the Highlands setting; even in recordings as intimate as these it has a wistful, faraway feel. Wells’ compositions make a lot out of this duality, and in turn he and his performers arrive at something that gracefully coalesces the humane and the divine. These are joyously unified sounds for our time that is anything but.