Three Amigos Celebration Biographies

Winston Morris has been internationally recognized for over five decades as one of the leaders in the advancement of the tuba. He is Professor of Music, Emeritus at Tennessee Technological University, in Cookeville, Tennessee, where he was on the faculty from 1967 to 2022. Morris is regarded as the leading authority on the literature for the tuba, was one of the founding fathers of the International Tuba Euphonium Association (ITEA), and, acknowledged worldwide as the major authority on the development of the tuba ensemble. He was the Senior Editor for the Tuba Source Book, conductor of the large professional tuba/euphonium ensemble, Symphonia, founder and co-producer of the tuba jazz ensemble, The MJT PROJECT, and has been awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by ITEA as well as the 2003 Tenn Tech University Caplenor Research Award, the most prestigious award presented annually to Tennessee Tech faculty.

As a performer on the tuba, Morris has toured throughout the United States, Australia, Europe, and Japan. He was a member of the acclaimed TUBAJAZZ CONSORT, has performed and toured with the Original Jack Daniel’s Silver Cornet Band and was the tubist with the Tennessee Tech University Brass Arts Quintet for 46 years.

 Morris was also very active as a soloist and presenter of tuba clinics and master classes. He has been the featured clinician at state conventions throughout the United States; at regional, national, and international tuba workshops; and appeared as soloist with such ensembles as the United States Army Band, the Sapporo Wind Ensemble, the SLÂ’s Musikkar Concert Band of Stockholm, and the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra.

The Tuba Music Guide by Morris was published in 1973 by the Instrumentalist Company and was highly regarded throughout the brass world as a definitive publication and reviewed as “the most comprehensive annotated bibliography of music ever compiled for any one instrument.” Other publications of Morris include the Introduction to Orchestral Excerpts for the Tuba published by Shawnee Press and a large number of transcribed and arranged solo and ensemble works for tuba published by The Brass Press, Southern Music Company, and a signature collection of publications, the R. Winston Morris Solo and Ensemble Series, released by Ludwig Music Publishing Company.

R. Winston Morris was one of the founders of the Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association, now ITEA, a 2,500-member professional international organization of euphoniumists and tubists. He has served as President, Vice President, Past President, Publications Coordinator, Journal (Newsletter) Editor, and currently serves on the Honorary Advisory Board of ITEA.  In 1967, Morris organized and founded the now internationally recognized Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble (TTTE). The TTTE has performed extensively throughout the eastern half of the United States. They have presented performances at regional, national and international symposia and workshops sponsored by ITEA, the International Brass Congress, and the Music Educators National Conference. They have thirty-one commercially produced recordings that have received the highest accolades from members of the music profession. The TTTE is responsible for hundreds of arrangements and compositions for tuba ensemble and for providing the inspiration and leadership for the formation of such ensembles internationally. The TTTE has performed on Bourbon Street and at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, Disney World, the National MENC Conference in Chicago, the International ITEA Conference in Austin, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, and eight unprecedented Carnegie Recital Hall appearances and performed at the World Fair in New Orleans and Knoxville.

Morris served for over 60 years as a consultant and clinician for Miraphone Corporation, a leading German manufacturer of professional and student caliber brass instruments. He was Coordinator of Brass Instruction at Tennessee Tech and responsible for a large and very active tuba/euphonium studio. His students have been very successful in the music education field and have won many national auditions in the performance area.

Daniel Perantoni recently retired as Tuba-Provost Professor at the Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music. Dan or “Mr. P” as his students call him is a legendary tuba artist, teacher, and pedagogue as well as a trailblazer in a variety of genres including work as a solo recitalist, chamber musician, jazz musician, and instrument design. He is a founding member of the Summit Brass, Symphonia, the St. Louis Brass Quintet, the Matteson-Phillips Tubajazz Consort, and has released numerous solo albums and chamber music CDs. He is a Buffet Crampon B&S Artist.

Jim Self (1943-2025) was a Los Angeles-based freelance musician whose career included work in the LA studios and orchestras as well as at the University of Southern California. Since 1974 he worked for all the major Hollywood studios performing for over 1500 motion pictures and hundreds of television shows and records. His solos in major films include John Williams’s scores to Jurassic Park, Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Hook. Most notably, he was the “Voice of the Mothership” from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Other solos can be heard in James Horner’s Casper and Batteries Not Included, Marc Shaiman’s Sleepless in Seattle and in Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Dennis the Menace. 

He held positions in five orchestras: Pasadena Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Opera Pacific, and the LA Opera. He collaborated with artists including Josh Grobin, Cassandra Wilson, Claus Ogerman, Mel Torme, Leon Redbone, Weird Al Yankovich, Maynard Ferguson, Randy Newman, Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Don Ellis.

In l983, Self produced his first album, Children at Play. He went on to record collaborations with harmonica player, Ron Kalina, and guitarist, John Chiodini. His albums spanned both classical and jazz genres. Over the course of his career, he recorded three albums of American songs, arranged by Kim Scharnberg, titled My America. In 2020, he produced a three-CD set of the music of the David Angel Band, a band with whom he played since the late 1970s. In all, Jim recorded and produced 23 albums. His recordings received recognition from High Fidelity Magazine, Downbeat, and the International Tuba and Euphonium Association.

Prior to his time in Los Angeles, Self was a faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Principal Tuba in the Knoxville Symphony, and member of The United States Army Band, Washington, D.C. Born in 1943 in Franklin, Pennsylvania and raised in nearby Oil City, he held degrees from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Catholic University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where he served as adjunct professor of tuba and chamber music. At USC, he organized the USC Bass Tuba Quartet that won 1st prize for chamber ensembles at the 2014 ITEC at Indiana University. For many summers he taught students at the Music Academy of the West, the Henry Mancini Institute and the Hamamatsu Wind Festival and Academy in Japan. His primary tuba teachers were William Becker, Harvey Phillips, and Tommy Johnson.

For 35 years Self was the leader of Tuba Christmas in Los Angeles – since its beginning in 1976 to 2011. In 1974 he organized and hosted the First Regional Tuba Euphonium Conference, during his last year at the University of Tennessee. In 1978 he organized and hosted the 3rd International Tuba Euphonium Conference at the University of Southern California. In 1976 he founded The Los Angeles Tuba Quartet with Tommy Johnson, Roger Bobo and Don Waldrop, and later, Los Tubas, a group of “loose” L.A. tuba players. Self was a past president of ITEA. 

Self was three times voted the Most Valuable Player Award for Tuba by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and named Emeritus winner in l987. In March 2003, He was given a Distinguished Alumni Award by Indiana University of Pennsylvania – a university-wide honor only given to 290 of the more than 120,000 graduates. In June 2008, Self was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Tuba-Euphonium Association at the Cincinnati Conservatory. At that same conference, he was also awarded the 1st Roger Bobo Award for Excellence in Recording (Jazz) for his CD InnerPlay. At the next ITEC in Linz Austria in 2010 he was awarded The Harvey Philips Award for Excellence in Composition for his piece for 8 tubas and drums, Woojoo.

Self was also a published composer and arranger. He has about 60 titles for brass, string and woodwind chamber music, works for band, orchestra, solo tuba and trombone. The Pacific Symphony commissioned him to write a feature work for the orchestra called Tour de Force: Episodes for Orchestra. The 13 minute piece was premiered at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Hall in Orange County on April 17-20, 2008, to great acclaim. A wind ensemble version has been performed by university ensembles across the United States, and the River City Brass Band recorded a version for brass band. Jim was composing his first concerto for tuba at the time of his death.

Jim and Jamie Self endowed over 45 scholarships for tuba players across the United States. He started by creating scholarships at Oil City High School in Pennsylvania, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Tennessee. In the last decade of his life, he began to establish Jim and Jamie Self Tuba Scholarships. In addition to these scholarships, he formed the Jim and Jamie Self Creative Award for ITEA, which recognizes an innovator within the tuba community.

As a solo artist, Self performed regularly worldwide. His concerts and clinics presented an interesting blend of classical and jazz music, and represented a wide spectrum of his many experiences as a performer, composer, and teacher.