Holiday Tubas tradition hits 50 years on Old Capitol steps

On an unseasonably warm December day in the early 1970s, shortly after Robert Yeats started as a University of Iowa tuba professor, he unknowingly started the Holiday Tuba tradition on the University of Iowa campus.

This year’s concert — starting at 12:30 p.m. Friday on the steps of Old Capitol — promises to be chillier, with temperatures around 20 and wind gusts. But UI tuba professor and concert planner John Manning is hoping to get 50 tuba players on the steps, given the 50th anniversary.

So, if you play a tuba, sousaphone or euphonium and have a winter coat and gloves, show up at noon, and Manning will give you a packet of arranged holiday music followed by hot apple cider and cookies inside Old Capitol.

The event’s history

Fifty years ago, Yeats found himself performing an end-of-semester concert with a talented group of tuba players before a limited audience of their peers inside the UI music building.

“And somebody said, ‘We should go play this outside,’ ” Yeats told The Gazette this week about the genesis of what has become the annual Holiday Tubas rite on the Old Capitol steps. “So we went outside and played it. And a tradition was born. Who would guess?”

The idea first percolated in Yeats’ mind from his days in upstate New York, where trombone players at the Eastman School of Music would convene on the steps to play around Easter.

  Buy Photo

He liked the concept — especially for his “underdog” cohorts in the tuba section.

“The particular gang that I had at the time were pretty good players, but they were kind of frustrated,” said Yeats, now an emeritus professor of the tuba and euphonium. “You never got to play a tune, really. I mean, you just played in the back row all the time.”

So when the group lugged their tubas for the first time up to the Old Capitol that warmer-than-usual December day, they started — as they did every concert — with an arrangement of the theme song from the cartoon “Underdog.” They also played some Charles Ives, and “people thought it was fun.”

“That’s why we kept doing it,” Yeats said.

Holiday evolution

  Buy Photo

Over the years, the concert’s proximity to the holidays snowballed into a full-on holiday theme — outfitting Yeats, as the conductor, in a Santa suit, and inspiring UI School of Music students to come up with more and more tuba arrangements of seasonal classics, from “Sleigh Ride” and “Silent Night” to “Frosty the Snowman” and “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.”

When Yeats unknowingly started the Holiday Tuba tradition in the early 1970s, he was new to campus and “didn’t know you were supposed to get permission to do stuff on the Pentacrest.”

The first year Yeats got that permission to conduct a tuba concert on the steps of the Old Capitol was 1974 — making this the holiday tradition’s official 50th anniversary.

We ‘played anyway’

Early on, Yeats made the concert a community event — putting out a call for tuba players in the area to come join students and faculty in the holiday performance, regardless of skill level.

Some of the more memorable concerts included one early on where they interrupted a protest.

“A bunch of guys showed up with signs, and there we were playing Christmas carols on tubas,” he said. “They looked kind of disappointed and walked away.”

  Buy Photo

Some years the crew had to move from the east steps to the west because the wind was blowing so hard “you could hardly stand up.” Or there was the year a blizzard closed I-80 and kept a television crew planning to film it from arriving.

“We went and played anyway,” he said.

  Buy Photo

On more than one occasion, the players have doubled the use of their music stands by turning them upside down and using them as shovels.

“They worked,” he said.

And while Yeats at some point started handing out candy to passersby who stopped to listen, “John (Manning) has taken it to another level,” he said.

  Buy Photo

50-tuba goal

When UI tuba professor Manning started at the university in 2004, he embraced the tradition after one of his students sprung it on him by asking, “Have you heard about the Santa suit?”

Today, the about 45-minute-long free concert of around 16 short songs also includes a post-performance gathering inside the Old Capitol for hot apple cider and cookies. The group also now collects new, unwrapped toys for the Iowa City Domestic Violence Intervention Program’s Holiday Shop.

And the repertoire of songs has evolved to include some from pop culture — including songs from the movies “Elf,” “Home Alone” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

“Quick, give me your favorite line from ‘Elf,’ ” Manning called out to his group of mostly tuba students on Tuesday during a midday rehearsal for the upcoming concert.

“You sit on a throne of lies,” one student called out.

Tapping the oversize candy cane on his music stand as a conductor baton, Manning ran through each song — making minor corrections along the way before reminding the musicians to spread the word to friends and fellow musicians and what to do if their instrument’s valves freeze.

“If the valves do seize up and freeze, that person has to go into the museum and warm up until it’s working, and then come back out for the next song,” he said.

Given the 50th anniversary, Manning said his goal is to get 50 tuba players on the steps — having put together extra packets of the arranged music for community members.

Fifth-year tuba student Matt Sleep, 23, said he’s played in the holiday concert every year except 2020 during COVID — and this could be his last in a while, with graduation looming.

“It’s always a good time,” he said.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com

  Buy Photo