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HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Mason Soria for winning the Los Angeles Philharmonic Principal Tuba Audition today!!!

Congratulations to this young man!

Yaaay! (humble brag: former student o' mine!)

Never heard of him.

I sure know that I'm about to!

Congratulations, Mason!

bort2.0 wrote: ↑Fri May 13, 2022 5:34 pm Never heard of him.

I sure know that I'm about to!

This young man is likely 24/25. Most of the tuba gossip is on social media nowadays, and probably not even on Facebook. It looks like he’s done a few impressive things already, but that stuff isn’t as consolidated in one spot (like TN) as it used to be.

Nonetheless, I’m sure he’s just about to take off on a new trajectory as a result of his hard work. We will definitely hear more about him!

Does his job without talking about it…

I like that.

Another one who is like this is Jeff Anderson.
- "I'm a working guy" attitude.
- no self-promotion.
- quite possibly (??) the best orchestral tuba player in the USA.
I admire Jeff VERY much (putting the three ingredients above together into a person).

Three Valves wrote: ↑Sat May 14, 2022 8:28 am Does his job without talking about it…

I like that.

It should also be noted that he won the Richmond Symphony Audition this past January. Not many people can say they won 2 full time orchestra auditions in a year! Congrats Mason!

I should also say I dig the classic wedding cake topper get-up.

And I’m confident there are no brown shoes out of picture.

Being so shiny, I'm going to guess that the tuba is a MRP, and not a PT-6.

For those who are interested, I did a little research and found the following info regarding who advanced at the audition.

- Cristina Cutts, Mason Soria, Chloe Higgins, and Steve Curtis were advanced from the preliminaries.

- Doug Tornquist, Aubrey Foard, Alan Baer, JaTik Clark and John DiCesare were auto-advanced to the semi-finals.

- Chloe Higgins, Aubrey Foard, Alan Baer and Mason Soria were advanced to the finals and played with the trombone section.

The finalists were qualified by the audition committee and the Music Director chose the winner. Mason Soria!

I was initially surprised to see that Alan Baer took the audition, since he already has a pretty good gig. But I was later reminded that he has some pretty serious SoCal ties from his student days.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that two women made the semis, one of whom advanced to the finals.

Anyway, congrats to all of these outstanding musicians.

Below is Mason's biography from the LA Phil website. As alluded to above, he has had some pretty good teachers.

Mason Soria began his musical endeavors on the tuba at the age of 10 and currently holds the Tuba position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mason’s orchestral pursuit began in his sophomore year of high school he won the Principal Tuba position in the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra. He held this position for the rest of high school and was able to go on the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra China Tour in the summer of 2015. He was then awarded a full tuition music scholarship to the University of North Texas, where he studied with Professors Donald Little and Matthew Good in pursuit of a Bachelor's degree in Music Performance. Mason has since been chosen as a semifinalist in the Leonard Falcone International Tuba Artist Competition in 2018 and 2021. He was also awarded a fellowship to the prestigious Aspen Music Festival where he studied with Warren Deck in 2019, and later in 2021 when he won the Aspen Music Festival Brass Concerto Competition. Shortly after returning from his first summer in Aspen, Mason won the Principal Tuba position with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in 2019. He held that position while he started his masters degree at the Frost School of Music at University of Miami where he was a teaching assistant studying under the tutelage of Dr. Aaron Tindall from 2020-2022. While in his last semester at Frost, Mason won the Principal Tuba position with the Richmond Symphony, only playing a few weeks of concerts before he won the Tuba position with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in May 2022.

Definitely some stiff competition in those rounds!