Today we’d like to introduce you to Larry Tuttle.
Hi Larry, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve been in music for as long as I can remember. All the way back to piano lessons in second grade, then string bass and orchestra starting in fourth grade. My life as a kid was absolutely saturated with playing in orchestras. I wore out my mom driving me (in her Barracuda, which was a hatchback and could fit the bass) to all-city orchestra, youth symphony, music camps, private bass lessons, rehearsals of all kinds, you name it. I spent a life-changing summer at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, playing principal in the World Youth Symphony. Pretty great.
Rock and roll entered my life in a BIG way in my mid-teens. I got a Hagstrom bass guitar, and I was hooked. I played in rock bands for the next fifteen years, moving to Los Angeles (as one does) to find fame and fortune. The group (called Russia, then later Force Ten) did a couple of albums on Warner Brothers Records and some touring before crashing and burning in a tempest of insanity and egos (as one does).
Hitting my 30s, I discovered a fabulous musical instrument called the Chapman Stick and spent the next twenty years or so playing Stick in an exotic hybrid instrumental group called Freeway Philharmonic. Freeway Phil was really the place where I started writing music in a big way. It lead me to the current love of my life – composing. After the group disbanded, composing began to dominate my life. I wrote for production music libraries for several years (I still do) and eventually found my way to concert composing.
These days I’m heavily involved in writing concert music for orchestras, bands and wind ensembles, chamber music and live performance of all kinds. I’m dedicated to providing fun and challenging music for those who spend their life with a musical instrument. University wind ensembles occupy a special place in my efforts now – I have several premieres coming up with some great college groups.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
A musical life is often filled with challenges, and mine has been no exception. Many, in fact probably most, of the ventures I’m involved in are speculative in some way. They may pay off, they may not. It can take years to see work finally reach its audience and start to gain traction. You write on faith – the faith that someone besides yourself will find value in the music and want to perform it. And for those of us with introverted natures (I’m looking at you, composers and bass players), self-promotion is a constant battle. The need to toot your own horn can be daunting. But music, of course, is worth it. The feeling of hearing my works performed is wondrous, in fact overwhelming. Especially when that performance is by students, people who are just making their way into a life in music.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
The music that I write is designed to tweak your imagination. Each piece lives in its own sonic world, and each piece carries its own narrative – has its own story to tell. Lately, I’ve been writing what I call “Cinematic Suites”. The Suites are extended works built around a central idea. For instance, my latest wind ensemble piece, THE TIME TRAVELER, has four movements – an overture and then one movement each portraying the Past, the Present and the Future. And the piece I’m currently developing, TALES OF SCIENCE AND MAGIC, is a tribute to science fiction and fantasy – the literature of the imagination, with movements portraying two contrasting sides of human nature – the intuitive and the logical. What I’m after in the end is inspiration – I want these pieces to inspire me the way I was inspired by music when I was young. Infinite possibility.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Listen to the music!! Visit my YouTube and Soundcloud sites, and subscribe if you are so moved. Each piece that I write is supported financially by a consortium of university or high school performing groups. Each school contributes a fee in exchange for rights to the first performances of the work, in-person rehearsals and other benefits. New consortium opportunities are always listed on my website, so you can visit there to see what’s new. And if you’re connected in any way to a university or high school, please point them my way. Private parties can also commission works, so if you’d like to be a patron of the arts, and have a piece of music with your name on it, let’s talk.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.larrytuttle.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/larry.novog/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLUfq1ck1DkUUsFSnmfwulg
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/larry-tuttle-composer
Image Credits
Sherry Rayn Barnett Stefanie Fife
