Three Amigos Celebration Biographies

Winston Morris has been internationally recognized for over five decades as one of the leaders in the advancement of the tuba. He is Professor of Music, Emeritus at Tennessee Technological University, in Cookeville, Tennessee, where he was on the faculty from 1967 to 2022. Morris is regarded as the leading authority on the literature for the tuba, was one of the founding fathers of the International Tuba Euphonium Association (ITEA), and, acknowledged worldwide as the major authority on the development of the tuba ensemble. He was the Senior Editor for the Tuba Source Book, conductor of the large professional tuba/euphonium ensemble, Symphonia, founder and co-producer of the tuba jazz ensemble, The MJT PROJECT, and has been awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by ITEA as well as the 2003 Tenn Tech University Caplenor Research Award, the most prestigious award presented annually to Tennessee Tech faculty.

As a performer on the tuba, Morris has toured throughout the United States, Australia, Europe, and Japan. He was a member of the acclaimed TUBAJAZZ CONSORT, has performed and toured with the Original Jack Daniel’s Silver Cornet Band and was the tubist with the Tennessee Tech University Brass Arts Quintet for 46 years.

 Morris was also very active as a soloist and presenter of tuba clinics and master classes. He has been the featured clinician at state conventions throughout the United States; at regional, national, and international tuba workshops; and appeared as soloist with such ensembles as the United States Army Band, the Sapporo Wind Ensemble, the SLÂ’s Musikkar Concert Band of Stockholm, and the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra.

The Tuba Music Guide by Morris was published in 1973 by the Instrumentalist Company and was highly regarded throughout the brass world as a definitive publication and reviewed as “the most comprehensive annotated bibliography of music ever compiled for any one instrument.” Other publications of Morris include the Introduction to Orchestral Excerpts for the Tuba published by Shawnee Press and a large number of transcribed and arranged solo and ensemble works for tuba published by The Brass Press, Southern Music Company, and a signature collection of publications, the R. Winston Morris Solo and Ensemble Series, released by Ludwig Music Publishing Company.

R. Winston Morris was one of the founders of the Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association, now ITEA, a 2,500-member professional international organization of euphoniumists and tubists. He has served as President, Vice President, Past President, Publications Coordinator, Journal (Newsletter) Editor, and currently serves on the Honorary Advisory Board of ITEA.  In 1967, Morris organized and founded the now internationally recognized Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble (TTTE). The TTTE has performed extensively throughout the eastern half of the United States. They have presented performances at regional, national and international symposia and workshops sponsored by ITEA, the International Brass Congress, and the Music Educators National Conference. They have thirty-one commercially produced recordings that have received the highest accolades from members of the music profession. The TTTE is responsible for hundreds of arrangements and compositions for tuba ensemble and for providing the inspiration and leadership for the formation of such ensembles internationally. The TTTE has performed on Bourbon Street and at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, Disney World, the National MENC Conference in Chicago, the International ITEA Conference in Austin, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, and eight unprecedented Carnegie Recital Hall appearances and performed at the World Fair in New Orleans and Knoxville.

Morris served for over 60 years as a consultant and clinician for Miraphone Corporation, a leading German manufacturer of professional and student caliber brass instruments. He was Coordinator of Brass Instruction at Tennessee Tech and responsible for a large and very active tuba/euphonium studio. His students have been very successful in the music education field and have won many national auditions in the performance area.

DANIEL PERANTONI recently retired as Tuba-Provost Professor at the Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music. Dan or “Mr. P” as his students call him is a legendary tuba artist, teacher, and pedagogue as well as a trailblazer in a variety of genres including work as a solo recitalist, chamber musician, jazz musician, and instrument design. He is a founding member of the Summit Brass, Symphonia, the St. Louis Brass Quintet, the Matteson-Phillips Tubajazz Consort, and has released numerous solo albums and chamber music CDs. He is a Buffet Crampon B&S Artist.

Jim Self (1943-2025) was a Los Angeles-based freelance musician.  Since 1974 he worked for all the major Hollywood studios performing for over 1500 motion pictures and hundreds of television shows and records. His solos in major films include John William’s scores to Jurassic Park, Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Hook, and was the “Voice of the Mothership” from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Other solos can be heard in James Horner’s Casper and Batteries Not Included, Marc Shaiman’s Sleepless in Seattle and in Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Dennis the Menace. Later films include Wall-E, Troy, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Legend of Zorro, War of the Worlds, King Kong, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Princess and the Frog, Valentines Day, Avatar, Tintin, Toy Story 3, and recently Bridges of Spies and Star Wars 7, The Force Awakens.

Terry Cravens, Conductor Jorge Mester, Bill Booth Josh Grobin, Cassandra Wilson, Claus Ogerman, Mel Torme, Leon Redbone, Weird Al Yankovich, Maynard Ferguson, Randy Newman, Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Don Ellis, the L.A. Philharmonic, LA Opera, Pasadena and Pacific symphonies, and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra are among the many artists and groups with whom he has recorded. Self was the string bass and tuba player with Jon Hendricks in his long running L.A. production of “Evolution of the Blues”. He held principal tuba positions with the Pacific Symphony, Pasadena Symphony and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and principal tuba/cimbasso in the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra which recently did a two-year run of the Wagner Ring Cycle and won a Grammy for Kurt Weill’s Mahagonney.

In l983, Self produced his first album, Children at Play. It features jazz tuba and harmonica and has received world-wide acclaim. It was chosen by High Fidelity magazine as one of the top ten jazz albums of that year. A second recording, New Stuff (fusion jazz), was released in l988 on compact disc. Both are on the Discovery-Trend label. His third recording, Tricky Lix, was released in 1990 on the Concord Jazz label featuring jazz greats Gary Foster and Warren Luening. In 1992, an all “classical” CD Changing Colors came out on the Summit label. A jazz CD, The Basset Hound Blues, with Pete Christlieb was released on d’Note Records in 1997. In 1999, a second “classical” recording, The Big Stretch, came out on Basset Hound Records. It features original compositions by Self and others. That was followed by an eclectic CD entitled My America with arrangements of American songs by Kim Scharnberg. Self is assisted by a great band of L.A. studio musicians and plays his new horn the FLUBA. Next Self recorded a quintet CD of jazz standards and originals called Size Matters, with late/great Tennessee tenor man, Bill Scarlett. Then came InnerPlay, a jazz and strings CD featuring Gary Foster, Pete Christlieb and Dan Higgins with arrangements by Brad Dechter. InnerPlay was chosen by Jazz Times magazine as one of the top 50 jazz albums of 2006 and that same year Self was nominated for the prestigious Downbeat Critics Poll. Returning to his roots, Self and harmonica virtuoso, Ron Kalina next released a new be-bop CD called The Odd Couple. Jim’s latest CD is called ‘Tis the Season TUBA Jolly on the Basset Hound label. It features the Hollywood Tuba 12 on 20 great Christmas arrangements featuring 29 of the top L.A. Area Tuba and Euphonium players. In 2015 he produced ¡YO!, a Latin Jazz band with great L.A. musicians—featuring the music of Franciosco Torres. In 2017 Jim produced a jazz duo Cd with Guitar great John Chiodini titled Floating in Winter. All of Self’s recordings and compositions are available from: www.bassethoundmusic.com.

Self was a past president of I.T.E.A., was a former faculty member of the University of Tennessee, Principal Tuba in the Knoxville Symphony and was a former member of The United States Army Band, Washington, D.C. Born in 1943 in Franklin, Pennsylvania, (raised in nearby Oil City), he held degrees from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Catholic University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where he served as adjunct professor of tuba and chamber music. At USC he organized the USC Bass Tuba Quartet that won 1st prize for chamber ensembles at the 2014 ITEC at Indiana University. For many summers he taught students at the Music Academy of the West, the Henry Mancini Institute and the Hamamatsu Wind Festival and Academy in Japan. In 2014 he was an adjudicator at the prestigious Jeju Festival Brass Competition in Korea. His primary tuba teachers were William Becker, Harvey Phillips, and Tommy Johnson.

For 35 years Self was the leader of Tuba Christmas in Los Angeles – since it’s beginning in 1976 to 2011. In 1974 he organized and hosted the First Regional Tuba Euphonium Conference, during his last year at the University of Tennessee. In 1978 he organized and hosted the 3rd International Tuba Euphonium Conference at the University of Southern California. In 1976 he founded The Los Angeles Tuba Quartet with Tommy Johnson, Roger Bobo and Don Waldrop, and later, Los Tubas, a group of “loose” L.A. tuba players. For several years he sponsored Creative Tuba Scholarships at various American universities. In 2011 he formally endowed the biannual Jim and Jamie Self Creative Award through ITEA. In December 2008, Self was invited by Gene Pokorny to play a week of Symphonie Fantastique with the Chicago Symphony.

Self was three times voted the Most Valuable Player Award for Tuba by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and named Emeritus winner in l987. In March 2003, He was given a Distinguished Alumni Award by Indiana University of Pennsylvania – a university wide honor only given to 290 of the more than 120,000 graduates. In June 2008, Self was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Tuba-Euphonium Association at the Cincinnati Conservatory. At that same conference, he was also awarded the 1st Roger Bobo Award for Excellence in Recording (Jazz) for his CD InnerPlay. At the next ITEC in Linz Austria in 2010 he was awarded The Harvey Philips Award for Excellence in Composition for his piece for 8 tubas and drums, Woojoo.

Besides his work as a tubist, Self maintained an active doubling career performing on bass trombone, cimbasso, contra-bass trombone, and (rarely now) string and electric basses and the Steiner EVI (electronic valve instrument). His latest new instrument is the FLUBA – an original design (picture a tuba-sized flugel horn). It is very unique and is a great solo instrument. Self is the author of the chapter “Doubling for Tubists” in The Tuba Source Book. His hobby is flying his 1973 Piper Arrow for fun, and sometimes to gigs.

Self was also a published composer and arranger. He has about 60 titles for brass, string and woodwind chamber music, works for band, orchestra, solo tuba and trombone. The Pacific Symphony commissioned him to write a feature work for the orchestra called Tour de Force: Episodes for Orchestra. The 13 minute piece was premiered at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Hall in Orange County on April 17-20, 2008, to great acclaim. He has since scored “Tour de Force for Wind Ensemble”. The east co-premier was at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in September 2009 with Jack Stamp, and the west premier was at USC in March 2010, H. Robert Reynolds, conducting. A Brass Band version was premiered on 6 concerts by the River City Brass Band in 2013, James Gourlay conducting. Portuguese tuba virtuoso, Sergio Carolino, is a champion of Self’s music and has commissioned, performed, and recorded several of his works.

Jim and Jamie Self endowed Instrumental Scholarships at Oil City High School in Pennsylvania, tuba scholarships at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, The University of Tennessee, the University of South Alabama, and have endowed five scholarships for the Legacy Brass Quintet at IUP. And five scholarships for the Volunteer Brass Quintet at UT. In 2012 they endowed a Creative Tuba Award through ITEA and offered the seed money for ITEA to establish a general endowment. Jim is also active commissioning new works, especially for the USC Bass Tuba Quartet.

As a solo artist, Self performed regularly worldwide. His concerts and clinics presented an interesting blend of classical and jazz music, and represented a wide spectrum of his many experiences as a performer, composer, and teacher. Jim Self was a Yamaha Performing Artist.