The tuba has taken Ralph Hepola many places, from his native Minnesota to Canada, New York City to Washington, D.C., and Illinois to Switzerland. Now based in Springfield, Hepola is packing up his tuba and hitting the road for an upper-Midwest tour funded by a grant from the John Stites Jazz Awards.
The Michigan-based organization recently awarded grants to three applicants, all of whom present a “new and innovative approach” to jazz music and will use the grant to help grow the genre’s audience. Hepola is an improvisational jazz tubaist currently focused on contemporary jazz. He’s using his funds to team up with three other Springfield musicians, Ralph Heopla’s Heptones, and travel to smaller communities with limited exposure to live jazz.
“I’m focusing exclusively on my improvisation of the F tuba. And so that makes me unique,” Hepola said. “I think I’m doing really well and I’m getting better all the time, so I’m excited about it.
It's hard for a musician to pack light and tour when his instrument of choice is the tuba.
“I’m really grateful for this award. We have private hotel rooms for eight nights and I’m renting a quarter-ton pickup truck with a four-passenger cab and a trailer, and it just all adds up. It adds up incredibly fast.”
Louis Armstrong made him want to play trumpet. A nun assigned him the tuba
Hepola’s tuba resume is impressive — especially for a musician who really wanted to play the trumpet. His interest in the instrument was sparked by seeing a jazz icon in person.
“I actually heard Louis Armstrong play at the old Minneapolis Auditorium,” Hepola said. “(He) played with his group… and I remember us standing really up close to the front of the stage and it was just really exciting to hear him. It was very inspirational. That’s where I got the idea of playing trumpet.”
Hepola’s parents both loved music and took their children to concerts. They also got Ralph started with piano lessons as a child.
Then came the opportunity to join a parochial school band program in the Minneapolis area. Hepola, 12 years old at the time, was a late arrival to the band, which was directed by Sister Frances Janelle. He told her about his interest in trumpet, but there were already a lot of trumpets in the band.
“She was pretty clever,” Hepola said. “She said, ‘I really need a good tuba player. If you take the tuba, once you get good enough I’ll let you switch to the trumpet.’ I think she knew that I wasn’t going to change my mind once I started the tuba, that I was the kind of kid who was just going to get attached to something and really get enthused about it.
“And I did. I really liked the tuba. I was really excited about it and I never went to the trumpet.”
Traveling the world, tuba in hands
Hepola flourished on the tuba, which opened up some incredible opportunities for him. While he was still in high school, he began performing as an extra musician with the Minnesota Orchestra. His time with that group included recordings and tours to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City. At 17, Hepola was chosen to play before the British Royal Family in the Manitoba All-Province Band at Brandon University, in Manitoba, Canada.
While he was still a teenager, Hepola won a position with the United States Army Band of Washington, D.C., and at age 20 he won a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music in the Young Artists Competition of the Minnesota Orchestra/WAMSO.
Hepola earned his music degree at Northwestern University. There he studied with Arnold Jacobs, a renowned musician and teacher, and the subject of five books.
Hepola later won an international audition for the Basel Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland’s third-largest city. During five years in Europe, he performed as a soloist on Swiss Radio and played in the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival in Austria.
And that’s not all. Hepola also freelanced for two years in New York City with various jazz and classical ensembles. In all, he has played performances of 73 different operas in 98 productions with 15 different musical organizations in the United States and Europe. Hepola can be heard on 51 professional recordings, including the major labels EMI and Warner Bros., as well as 49 video productions.
Warming up to Springfield and its friendly people
Hepola and his wife, who is originally from Montana, relocated to Springfield in 2019. What drew this world-traveling tubaist to the Queen City of the Ozarks?
“Winters were really getting to us,” Hepola said. “My wife wanted to try a warmer place. I think maybe she was thinking more Sun Belt, because she isn’t real crazy about the Springfield winters, either. But it is warmer here. Spring comes about a month earlier, fall comes about a month later. We had mutual friends who had moved here and we came and tried it. We’re liking it so far.”
Hepola has ingrained himself in the Springfield performing arts scene, playing at events like First Friday Art Walk, Cider Days and Artsfest. He said he appreciates the opportunities he’s been given.
“(I) appreciate the friendly people of Springfield. My wife and I continually say they’re not as cold as the Scandinavian Minnesotans and they’re not as brusque as the people on the East Coast, so we’re enjoying the people here.”
He's assembled a band of veteran Springfield musicians
Some of those friendly Springfield people will join him on the “Take in a Jazz Festival this Summer!” tour. His band includes veteran guitarist John Strickler, a name Hepola said southwest Missouri music fans will recognize. Strickler was born in Kansas City, but moved to Springfield as a child.
“He’s played with many different groups, like rock bands, in the past and now he mainly plays jazz,” Hepola said. “He has a solo thing that he does playing jazz guitar. He’s very, very talented. I mean, I think he’s a national or world-class talent. He could probably move to New York City and launch a career, but he doesn’t seem to be interested in doing that. He’s happy in Springfield.”
On bass is Seth Darby, another familiar local name. Darby, who also plays guitar and writes music, recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee. On drums is Daniel Pasquale, who Hepola calls a “talented young drummer.”
“He went to Missouri State and he’s played with MOJO, which is the Missouri Jazz Orchestra, for 10 years now,” Hepola said. “He’s been a professional musician for 20 years.”
The band's lineup will be accessible for all audiences
The “Take in a Jazz Festival this Summer!” launched May 23 with a show in Carbondale, Illinois. From there it’s on to Galena and Streator, before the band plays in Newaygo and Milford, Michigan, May 26-27. Ralph Hepola’s Heptones wrap up the tour May 29 in Urbana, Illinois.
“They’re very nice communities,” Hepola said. “I researched them and they’re each unique and have something to offer, but they don’t have a lot of live jazz.”
The setlist will be a little different than the improvisational jazz Hepola likes to play, but that’s all part of growing the audience.
“There is far-out, atonal, dissonant jazz that they might not like, but we’re going to play a lot of swing music,” he said. “We’re going to play a lot of standard songs that they’ve maybe heard before, like ‘All of Me’ or ‘Summertime,’ songs like that. We want to get people excited about jazz and wanting to go to a jazz festival and maybe start listening to it.”
The band will publicize ten major Upper Midwest jazz festivals at their shows, including the Twin Cities Jazz Festival in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“Hopefully we’re getting people interested in jazz,” Hepola said. “(Hopefully) people will think, ‘Hey, maybe as part of our summer vacation we should take in a jazz festival.’”
