The Solo
🌺 Part of the Essays series
I am about to perform a senior tuba recital at Colorado State University.
It’s almost surreal.
I pace the hallway outside the recital hall, passing a mirror and sink. I stop just long enough to look myself in the eye.
You’re ready.
You’re prepared.
You can do this.
I say it like I mean it.
Everyone is here.
My music friends. My professors—people I respect, people who trained me. My tuba instructor. My family.
All of them sitting out there, waiting.
The first time I played tuba was in the fall of 1999, just after I agreed to join the Symphonic Band.
Since there were no other tuba players, the director asked if I would try.
I said yes.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I had arrived at Colorado State undeclared, eventually choosing sports medicine as a major because it seemed interesting enough. I thought I wanted to become an athletic trainer.
But as I started looking more seriously at athletic training programs, I realized I might need to go elsewhere.
I joined the marching band my freshman year, playing sousaphone.
Music was for fun.
It wasn’t the plan.
I started looking at other schools—far enough away to feel like a real change, and expensive enough that I needed to think about scholarships.
A music scholarship started to make sense.
Private lessons. Music theory. Music history.
It started to look less like a scholarship—and more like a degree.
I remember asking myself:
What would I do if I had both?
The answer came quickly.
I would teach music.
That semester, playing tuba for the first time, I changed my major.
I became a music student.
I was twenty.
Most of the people around me had been playing their instruments since middle school.
I felt like I was already behind—because I was.
Symphonic band became the bridge.
Each rehearsal, I felt a little more comfortable. I started to understand where I fit. I even began to enjoy the tuba parts in the music we were playing.
Until one day, Holst’s Second Suite in F showed up on my stand.
We started running the piece.
And in the fourth movement—
I saw it.
A tuba solo.
A real one.
Me.
That solo became everything.
I played it before marching band—on my sousaphone. Over and over.
I listened to recordings over and over.
I worked it with a metronome, locking in the syncopated rhythms until they felt natural.
I wanted to know it so well that by the time of the concert, I wouldn’t be afraid of it.
No one would know I had just started playing this instrument.
I played the solo.
I remember thinking:
If I can do that, I can get through theory.
I can get through history.
And that was enough.
I walk out onto the stage.
I look out at the audience.
The room is full.
I’ve done the work.
I take a breath.
And I begin.