It was September 18, when according to the Chinese lunar calendar, it was the Full Moon Festival, traditionally an occasion for Chinese people to celebrate family union. However, that night the Beijing Forbidden City Concert Hall was as full as ever with an audience anticipating a rare tuba concert in China.

Micky Wrobleski, the principal tuba with Beijing Symphony Orchestra, was to perform the Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra written by John Williams.

When he finished playing the last note, the tuba player was greeted with thundering applause, excited whistles and ardent requests for encores.

With mixed meters, constantly shifting tonalities and a flurry of notes, Wrobleski has demonstrated that the tuba can take the solo spotlight just as easily and display just as much virtuosity as other instruments.

At the end of the show, a member of the audience came over to give his congratulations: "I can't believe the tuba could have been played this way," he enthused.

The Minnesota-born musician answered with a smirk, (he would have shrugged if there were not a tuba over his shoulder): "Me, either before I started to learn (to play) it."

Wrobleski picked up the tuba at the age of 16. By then, he had played the saxophone for three years.

The shift of instruments was an accidental yet natural happening.

"At that time, I was kind of stuck with the saxophone. I wouldn't make any more progress and I hated to practice it," recalled Wrobleski. "Then I was transferring to another high school and they needed someone to play the tuba. I jumped at the chance."

Probably because of the pressure from his parents, the new convert practiced really hard with the tuba and became instantly hooked.

"I was so excited and so in love with the sound it made," Wrobleski said. "By the end of the first day, I knew for sure that this was the instrument I wanted to play for the rest of my life."

Yet it was after three years in China that he realized what his life-long cause should be.

Wrobleski developed a strong desire for Asia while learning taekwondo as a child. This desire led him to China.

In 2002 when the Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra invited him to be the principal tuba, he jumped at the chance.

At that time, he had graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he studied tuba with Jerry Young for five years. The following seven years saw him play principal tuba with several of the orchestras in the Chicago region, including that of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Wrobleski stayed in Shanghai for around a year before he came to Beijing to assume the principal tuba position with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, a turning point in his professional career as a musician.

Tan Lihua, the chief conductor and art director of the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, is one of China's top and innovative conductors. He has maintained an exciting and challenging combination of repertoire for the orchestra that has the tuba well incorporated. The recent debuted concert in the Forbidden Concert Hall is just one of these.

With all his talent and passion for the instrument, two years after his co-operation with the orchestra in Beijing, Wrobleski's tuba-related life vision has broadened.

"In China, the tuba is a terribly misunderstood, infrequently used and a rarely heard instrument," said the musician, frowning a little. "I hope to change it."

He maintains an active schedule balanced with orchestral performances, solo performances, composing, teaching, studio recording and spending time with his English bulldog, Bully.

Whenever he finds time, he compiles some of the world's classics for the tuba and also composes some himself.

At present, he is recording his first CD, which is due for release in both China and the United States later this year. Eight works have been selected from a wild palette of compositional styles with which Wrobleski hopes to showcase the versatility of the tuba in different settings.

Among them is the Chinese guzheng masterpiece A Floral, Moonlit Night on A Spring River (Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye), in which he pushes boundaries to incorporate the tuba with the Chinese traditional instrument, guzheng.

By introducing music Chinese people can easily relate to, Wrobleski hopes to get China more acquainted with the tuba, which, in his words, "heavy and seemingly formidable, yet not that difficult."

"I have been blessed to be a tuba musician. It is something I am thankful for, every day of my life. There is not one morning where I wake up and think, 'I really don't want to go to work today,'" Wrobleski said. "I am privileged to be doing what I am doing. So I have picked the tuba, which is just as fun to perform, as it is to listen to."

Sometimes when he comes back early in the morning after a whole night of studio recording, Wrobleski takes a stroll in the hutong area, resting somewhere at a doorstep, "more than ever, I feel quite at home," he said.

(China Daily October 14, 2005)