Business & Professional Horning In A Ferndale business has cornered the oom-pah-pah market. George Cantor Special to the Jewish News T here may not be 76 trombones in Fred Marrich's back room. But, man, has he got the tubas. Dozens of them, enough to stock all the marching bands in Michigan. Some are brass and some are silver; some of them have rotary valves and some have pistons. Some are crafted in Switzerland, some in Germany and some in China. Marrich's Ferndale-based Custom Music is at the high end of low brass instruments., He sells lots of euphoniums and bassoons, too, and in an annex down the block he's even got marimbas. But he is the undisputed king of tubas, the biggest dealer in that instrument in North America. Musicians from around the world fly in to consult and buy. Virtuosos from almost every major symphony orches- tra in the United States get their tubas from his company. "A high-quality tuba will sell for up to $20,000," he says. "And the tubas we handle are the best in the world. We make sure of that. "When we got into the business, it was kind of haphazard. There was no set stan- dard for tubas. There was no great demand, either. I went to the top brass makers in this country and they'd tell me, `I can sell 10 or 12 trumpets for what it would cost me to make a tuba. Why should I bother?" So Marrich looked overseas. It was the early 1950s and Europe's musical craftsmen were struggling. Much of their market had disappeared in the devastation of World War II and they still had not regained their economic footing. He signed exclusive agreements with two of the finest tuba makers in the world — Hirsbrunner in Switzerland and Meinl in Germany. In return, he gave them financ- ing to resume production and entree to the American market. So why tubas? Marrich took over the music busi- ness started by his father, Meyer Marrich. Meyer's Music was already 34 years old in 1950 and a Detroit institution among educators and brass instrumentalists. "We were a full service music store says Marrich,"but I began to see that we had lots of competition. So why not specialize in the instruments that no one else is selling? That's what led me to tubas and the other low brass." He didn't know it, but in the next few years tubas and bassoons would undergo a musical revolution. In the earliest days of recorded jazz, the bass was often sup- plied by a tuba. It has always been a staple of marching bands. Ohio State still has an entire ritual built around the tuba player dotting the "i" in the script Ohio formation. In brass bands, tubas provide the thun- der. In symphonic music, however, tubas and bassoons were always given a limited and sometimes clownish role. But in the early 1970s, a new generation of serious composers began writing specifi- cally for those instruments. The oom-pah- pah was out. Extended solo passages, tuba concertos and even chamber quartets were in. "If you wanted a music scholarship to one of the top universities," says Sara Schoenbeck, one of the top bassoonists in America, "you went into the low brass. They became the center of action among young instrumentalists:' Said Marrich, "We realized that if we wanted to grow we had to find out what these musicians wanted from their instru- ments. So we began contacting the top edu- cators and tubists in the field." It is a difficult instrument to master because of the wind required to sustain a note. Wesley Jacobs, tubist for the Detroit Symphony, once said that to play it success- fully "you have to be something of an ath- lete. It's a good idea to keep in shape." Marrich consulted with Jacobs and Robert Tucci, who played with the Munich Opera Symphony. Tucci led him to Dan Perantoni, professor of tuba at Indiana University, and he became Marrich's most trusted adviser and partner. Together they devised the PT-6 model. It became the standard for American sym- phony musicians. "More tubists won their chairs in American orchestras by playing Fred Marrich our PT-6 in competition than any other',' says Marrich. When it became known that this flawless instrument, produced by Meinl, was avail- able only through Custom Music, Marrich's company became the center of the tuba universe. Kevin Powers, the head technician at Custom Music, says, "I have a customer who flies in every year from Malaysia to have his tuba repaired here. He doesn't trust any- one else to do it. That says a lot about our standing. It's a close-knit world among low- brass players and they all trust us." Marrich, a longtime member of Temple Israel, employs only seven people in his Ferndale operation. He is reluctant to dis- cuss total sales but says he sells about 300 tubas in a typical year and that sales in that instrument alone are "into the millions" of dollars. He expanded his market even further by finding and encouraging tuba makers in China, who produce lower-cost instruments that are sold to schools. "The tuba keeps evolving, too," he says. "Many tubists now want a fifth valve on the instrument. And there are significant differences between tubas sold in Europe and North America. We prefer a lower pitch, which calls for a longer tuning slide and fewer vibrations. Dr. Perantoni also devel- oped an improved mouthpiece which is now widely accepted." The only cloud on the horizon is a short- age of qualified tuba technicians. "I don't know where they'll come from because it involves getting your hands dirty and using math',' says Powers. "Most of our young people don't like to do either one. So the field is wide open." "The memory I most treasure," says Marrich,"was sitting in Meinl's apartment in Germany, sipping wine and him telling me that it \vas important to him to deal with a Jewish businessman because of what had happened there. He emphasized that he wanted me to know that, and I was quite moved. "Of course, he also served rabbit for lunch, and that part of the experience I try to forget." E July 20 • 2006 41