ITEC 2001 Artists

Skip Gray joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky School of Music in the Fall of 1980 and holds the rank of Professor of Music. He has appeared as a tuba soloist and clinician throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. He is also Principal Tuba with the Lexington Philharmonic. Skip Gray earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree and Master of Music from the University of Illinois where he was a student of Daniel Perantoni. He earned a Bachelor of Music from Baldwin-Wallace College in his hometown, Berea, Ohio studying the tuba with Ronald Bishop of the Cleveland Orchestra. During the 1988-89 season and in the Spring of 1990, Gray served as Principal Tuba in the Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI in Turin, Italy. In 1982 he was presented in Carnegie Recital Hall by Twentieth Century Innovations in a program of five new works for tuba and woodwind quintet. A special interest has been inducing new works for the solo tuba. He has commissioned and given premiere performances of many new works including the Fantasia for Solo Tuba and Brass Ensemble by Allen Vizzutti, Variations on an Aboriginal Melody for Tuba and Woodwind Quintet by Jim Curnow, and the Sonata for Tuba and Piano by Kent Holliday.

Gray is well known for his arrangements and transcriptions for tuba-euphonium ensemble. Many of his works for this medium have been recorded by groups including the British Tuba Quartet, the Gerhard Meinl Tuba Sextet, and the Melton Tuba Quartet. Currently President-elect of the international tuba-euphonium association (T.U.B.A.), Skip Gray served the organization as Corresponding Secretary from 1982 to 1987 and became its first Executive Secretary, serving two terms in that office from 1987 to 1991. He hosted the 1992 International Tuba-Euphonium Conference held in Lexington at the University of Kentucky.

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