The Wedding Gig Book, Volume 1: Tuba Part(s)

This is music steeped in ceremony and tradition. Pieces like the Prelude to Te Deum and Wagner's Wedding March carry historical weight and formal grandeur, while selections like Ode to Joy bring a sense of celebration and hope. The tuba part gives you genuine voice in creating the emotional landscape, not just filling harmonic space. Together, these ten pieces create a through-line that feels both familiar and elegant.

Tuba players in brass quintets preparing wedding ceremonies and similar formal occasions. Whether you're in an advanced high school ensemble, a college brass group, or a working professional quintet, these medium-level arrangements provide the repertoire that ceremonies demand. You'll find the music neither oversimplified nor technically forbidding, making the collection useful across multiple skill levels within the same engagement.

• Balance your tone to sit comfortably in the quintet voicing without overwhelming the higher brass. These arrangements position the tuba prominently enough that clarity of pitch and articulation will be heard.
• Work out repeats in advance with your ensemble. Since pieces are designed to accommodate timing needs like the processional, agree on exactly how many times you'll play each section rather than cueing during the ceremony.
• Tailor your vibrato to the character of each piece. The formal dignity of Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary calls for restraint, while Gounod's Ave Maria benefits from a warmer, more singing approach.
• Pay attention to the fermatas and cadences. Wedding ceremonies prize clear phrase endings, so lock in those moments with your ensemble for confident transitions between pieces.

This collection is designed specifically for wedding work, whether your ensemble plays the full ceremony or a portion of it. Use shorter pieces like Canon and Air from Water Music as the bride's processional, building to something grander like Wagner or Clarke for the recessional. The included pieces work well with repeats to manage timing during the signing of the register, and you can select a subset if the ceremony calls for just 10 or 15 minutes of music rather than the full 30.

• Reading medium-difficulty brass quintet voicings with independent tuba lines
• Ensemble balance and blend in formal ceremonial contexts
• Responding to and managing repeats for time-flexible performance requirements
• Stylistic flexibility across both Baroque and Romantic-era repertoire
• Confident accompaniment of processional and recessional tempos