“The shiny brass Mario Corso tuba stood out for 12 years as one of the largest members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans,” writes Jennifer Levitz in Wednesday’s (3/7) Wall Street Journal. Last month, “A thief ran off with it, presumably slowly. ‘What were they thinking?’ says Ben Jaffe, the band’s creative director…. ‘What are they going to do with it?’ … About the only thing stranger than tuba thefts is how often they happen. There was a rash of tuba burglaries in Los Angeles-area high schools around 2012…. In Greensboro, N.C., Walter Hines Page High School music instructor Eddie Deaton says he arrived one May morning in 2016 … someone [broke] into the school… Leaving other instruments untouched, the burglar wheeled out carrying cases holding two marching-style tubas…. Kenneth Amis, assistant professor of tuba at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, imagines thieves assuming something so big would be valuable, not realizing how tough it is to unload one. ‘Few people are looking to buy tubas from a pawnshop.’ … In New Orleans … Mr. Jaffe is confident, given the police investigation and an outpouring of support, ‘that the tuba is going to come back to me.’ ”
Posted March 9, 2018
