Floyd O. CooleyTuba
Profile:Nationally and internationally known tubist, Floyd O.
Cooley has been heard in recital throughout the US, Europe, Australia, New
Zealand and Japan, appearing as soloist, clinician, giving Master classes, and
as a member of the San Francisco Symphony and Chicago Symphony.
Floyd joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1969, at the
time the youngest tuba player in any major orchestra in the United States. Since then he soloed with that orchestra on
two occasions, under the baton of Seiji Ozawa and Jahja Ling, given recitals in
a wide variety of places, including Carnegie Hall, commissioned works by Earl
Zindars and Richard Felciano and recorded three solo albums, The Romantic Tuba
on Crystal Records, A Schumann Fantasy on Summit Records, and Friends in Low
Places on Albany Records. He played the 1992-1993 season with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra.
As a musician of extremely varied activities and
interests, Floyd founded the San Francisco Tuba Quartet. He has performed on
the Visiting Artist Series in the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois, where he
played in schools and factories to over fifteen thousand people, and has played
with the 49ers Jazz Band. No matter what
the activity, Floyd has been praised for his sensitive playing, mellow tone and
singing melodic line. The San Francisco
Chronicle wrote "the sheer beauty of tone and technical accuracy were
amazing. The effect was operatically
vocal." A performer at the Aspen
Festival in the summers of 1968 and 1969, Floyd was a participant at the Grand
Teton Music Festival from 1975-2001.
Floyd spent one year at Kansas University and received a
Performer's Certificate from Indiana University in 1969. While at Indiana he studied with William
Bell, and also has studied with Mstislav Rostropovich, Jacob Krachmalnick and
Mark Lifschey. He studied with Arnold Jacobs who was his major influence in
teaching and playing from 1968-1998.
In 2001, after 31 years playing with the SFS, he turned his
career solely to teaching.
Prior to leaving the San Francisco Symphony Floyd
taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Stanford University for 32
years and DePaul University. His teaching has taken him to New Zealand,
Australia, Russia, Canada, Japan, Germany, Spain and Sweden. Currently he is
teaching at DePaul University where he is the Brass Department Coordinator,
teaching tuba, brass pedagogy and teaching performance majors to teach one on
one. He flies 100,000 miles a year to teach in Chicago and all of the major
musical capitols of the World. His students hold many of the major orchestral
and teaching jobs in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
