Critiquing Christmas: The Fourth Annual Great Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition
Or, Pirates Ruin Everything.
Critiquing Christmas: The Grottoās Christmas Festival of Lights
Puppets, Choirs, and A BABY CAMEL
Critiquing Christmas: Benson Hotelās Annual Gingerbread Masterpiece
Warning: Do NOT Eat It
Balanchineās Nutcracker Will Never Be The Nutcracker Of My Childhood
Come For the Amazing Choreography! Leave Because Dancing Candy Should Not Be This Racist!
Critiquing Christmas: PIRās Winter Wonderland
The Portland International Raceway Has All of the Lights
Critiquing Christmas: Tuba Christmas
An Ode to the Orchestra’s Mightiest Instrument—the Tuba!
Dear fools of the world: Stop underestimating the mighty tuba!
Due to nearly 200 years of mismanagement from the orchestral elite, the tubaās mighty, booming voice has been stifled and reduced to shamefully comedic āoom-pah-pahsā by slow-witted, uninspired composers. These tone-deaf idiots remain willfully ignorant of the raw power of the tuba, that when released, rises like a roaring kraken from the waves.
Example: In John Philip Sousaās magnum opus āThe Stars and Stripes Forever,ā the songās midpoint solo is provided by the puny piccolo. Its high-pitched trill is an embarrassment, bringing to mind a high-stepping, ineffectual fop limply waving the flag that so many fought and died for. However, as a youth, my eyes were opened to the tubaās power and possibility at a high school band competition where this song was featured. Instead of a trilling, feckless piccolo stepping to the front, the solo was performed by the mighty tuba! Where the piccolo wouldāve squeaked, the tuba boomed, conjuring visions of a towering giant smashing the scattering, screaming enemies of America! The tuba could easily become the most admired and important instrument of the modern orchestraāif only weād remove its chains.
With that in mind I attended the recent Tuba Christmas in Portlandās Pioneer Square, in which 300 tubasā300 TUBAS!!āgathered to play holiday-inspired tunes. The result was simultaneously great and frustrating.

Featuring various styles of tuba including euphoniums, helicons, baritone horns, and (my personal favorite) the MIGHTY SOUSAPHONE, this very talented orchestra played a range of Christmas faves, of both religious and secular variety, to a huge crowd of passive-aggressive senior citizens, annoying parents of annoyed children, and true tuba enthusiasts. While their performances of āWhite Christmasā and Vince Guaraldiās āChristmas Time Is Hereā (as played by an Oregon Symphony tubaist) were things of sonic beauty, these 300 mighty tuba players were mostly confined to their chairs and staid musical arrangementsāchained to the same timid presentation that has plagued this mighty instrument for almost two centuries.
While there was certainly nothing to be offended by in this performance, the organizers seem to have forgotten the potential power in their grasp: 300 MIGHTY TUBAS! Screw the permits, these powerhouses of sound should take over the streets! They should be allowed to release the THUNDER that lives deep within their twisting tubes, and play āRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeerā with such loud, enthusiastic abandon that sneering senior citizens and annoying families will flee the streets in terror... at first. Eventually theyāll realize the tuba is a benevolent god, one that uses its deafening, boisterous voice to remind puny humans that we all carry such power deep insideāif only we were brave enough to unleash it.
Overall Christmas rating: 13.7 candy canes.













