Gwyneth Walker

SSO Makes Perfect Pitch With "Tubby"

by Clifton J. Noble, Jr., The Springfield Union-News


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... The electrifcation was left to Vermont composer Gwyneth Walker, whose "Bonny Tuba" (the finale of her new tuba concerto Chanties and Ballads) closed the concert's first half. Walker talked briefly and engagingly about the piece and her life as a composer (she writes every day on the dairy farm where she lives with 218 cows for neighbors). "Bonny Tuba" puts the folk tune "My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean" through some wonderfully fresh and witty variations, including some gurgling tuba triplets.

Stephen Perry returned as soloist, and blew cleanly and with panache through some passage work that might have given Wynton Marsalis pause, had he chosen to play a larger instrument.

From The Springfield Union News, Massachusetts, January 23, 1996