THE DEPTH OF (OUR TUBA) ROT

What Does a Rainbow Tuba Mean?

Yesterday, I began to write about the 2024 Jeju International Brass Competition. This contest first came on my radar last year, and I covered its all-male repertoire and 28-man jury then. Yesterday, I touched on how the competition chose not to amplify any voices of women composers for tuba, but they did choose to amplify a composer, Mike Forbes, who “admitted to engaging in a sexual act with an undergraduate student who was baby-sitting at his home.”

Jeju is not the only current tuba contest to choose to amplify the work of Mike Forbes. The Ljubljana Festival’s International Competition will take place in February, 2025, and the categories are five different brass chamber music ensembles. In the euphonium/tuba quartet category, out of 10 named works, three (3) are arranged or composed by Mike Forbes. In the tuba quartet category, out of 14 named works, a distinct other set of three (3) works are arranged or composed by Mike Forbes.

The jury for the Ljubljana Festival’s International Competition is three only white men for the preliminary round (which allows acceptance into the competition at all), and the competition jury itself features 5 all-white jurors, 4 of whom are men. This is all very international, of course, because we know that internationally, men make 87.5% of the population and white people make 100% of the population.

When a piece of music, or an arrangement, is required by an international contest, the composer of that work, especially if they are living, gets a tremendous boost. There is the cost of sales of music, there are the royalties from performance, and there is—best of all—the increased play that their work will receive, which comes with financial kick-backs in terms of more commissions, performances, and recordings. If someone learns a piece for a contest, they are also likely to play it elsewhere because they’ve invested so much time in it. Some contests have done great things for composers who need the exposure by choosing to require their works.

So, why are these two ongoing international tuba contests going so far out of their way to boost Mike Forbes? Here are the reasons I can think.

• His tuba compositions and arrangements are just so good and superior that they trump his ethical choices to abuse his power with women students.

• His tuba compositions and arrangements are just so good and superior that they trump the need for literally any woman composer at all in Jeju, and so superior that they trump the need for any woman composer except for (the same) one (twice) in 90% and 93% of the required repertoire in Ljubljana.

• The men in charge feel sympathy for Mike Forbes. The men in charge like Mike Forbes.

• The men in charge feel Mike Forbes needs the career boost they are providing by programming his works in international competitions.

• The men in charge have no issues with Mike Forbes’ behavior because they have felt entitled throughout their lives to behave the same way. The men in charge think what Mike Forbes did is not so bad because they themselves have done it, too.

• They don’t know about Mike Forbes’ behavior and publicly available court records.

Let’s assume the best here, that they just didn’t know about Forbes. If this is the case, it’s because they do not have to live within the whisper network women still have to participate in in order to try to be safe in our industry. Well, that’s understandable, especially if you look like most of the people on these juries. Here’s the Jeju one, and the Ljubljana ones are above:

Let’s talk about that last man photographed on the Jeju jury. Øystein Baadsvik is the President of the International Tuba-Euphonium Association (ITEA). The ITEA prides itself on diversity and inclusion. Here’s what they say on their website:

Despite being the leader of an organization which says these things and has a graphic of a rainbow tuba, Baadsvik has chosen to participate on an international jury which is 86% male and contains no Black or brown people. He’s chosen to participate on an international jury which oversees a competition with a repertoire list which excludes women and non-white composers but includes Mike Forbes.

Can the President of the ITEA claim that he does not know about Mike Forbes? If so, did no one else in the ITEA know and have the ability to clue Baadsvik in? What kind of bonds is Baadsvik actually fostering?

So, here’s my advice to Mr. Baadsvik and the other men on these juries. Read about Mike Forbes if you don’t already know. Read about the efforts he’s gone to to make sure you don’t know about him. Then remove his work from your competitions. Then replace it with works by composers who need representation in your corner of the industry. And make sure women, Black, and brown people are represented appropriately on your international juries.