Ralph Hepola

Ralph Hepola

Musicians | Instrument: Tuba | Location: Kansas City

Tu like a tuba, fufu like a funker and gro like a groover. This tune has Herbie fusion magic all over it. 4 stars.

—Fiona Ord-Shrimpton, All About Jazz

Updated: January 25, 2024

Ralph Hepola was born into a Scandinavian-American family in Saint Paul, Minnesota in the United States where his early eclectic musical interests led to piano study before starting on the tuba at age twelve. At seventeen, he was chosen to play before the British Royal Family in the Manitoba All-Province Band at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada. While still in high school, Ralph began performing as an extra musician with the Minnesota Orchestra, which later included recordings, and tours to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City. While still a teenager, Ralph won a position with The United States Army Band of Washington, D.C. At age twenty, he won a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music in the Young Artist Competition of the Minnesota Orchestra/WAMSO.

Ralph earned his music degree at Northwestern University where he studied with renowned musician and teacher Arnold Jacobs. Six books have been published covering Mr. Jacobs’ celebrated career, which included forty-four years as Principal Tubaist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. At Northwestern University, Ralph played and soloed with Jazz Ensemble I, which twice won Best Big Band at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival. Ralph also studied with Ross Tolbert, Principal Tuba, Minnesota Orchestra, 1966-2004.

Subsequently, Ralph won an international audition for the Basel Symphony Orchestra. Basel is Switzerland’s third-largest city. There he performed under renowned conductors including Pierre Boulez and Antal Dorati. 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 under Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, and Lorin Maazel. Ralph then freelanced for two years in New York City with various jazz and classical ensembles.

Ralph Hepola is heard on forty-six professional recordings including the major labels EMI and Warner Music, as well as thirty-nine video productions. Ralph has performed for national tours of Broadway shows at the State and Orpheum Theatres in Minneapolis and Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in Saint Paul.

The Missouri Arts Council chose Ralph for its April 2021 Featured Artists. The Southwest Minnesota Arts Council awarded Ralph an Individual Artist Career Grant in 2017. The Minnesota State Arts Board awarded highly-competitive Artist Initiative Grants to Ralph Hepola for both 2010 and 2012. In 2004, Ralph completed a seven-week residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation (awarded internationally) in the esteemed arts community of Taos, New Mexico. 

Ralph has also performed at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina which "is internationally recognized as America's premier performing arts festival"; the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis, which is North America’s largest theatre for young people and their families; as well as the Guthrie Theater, the nation’s largest regional theater.

Read more

Tags

All About Jazz Articles

5
Take Five With...

Take Five with Ralph Hepola

Read "Take Five with Ralph Hepola" reviewed by Ralph Hepola


About Ralph Hepola Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in the United States, Ralph Hepola studied piano before starting on the tuba at age twelve. At seventeen, he was chosen to play before the British Royal Family in the Manitoba All-Province Band at Brandon, Manitoba in Canada. While still in high school, Ralph began performing as an extra musician with the Minnesota Orchestra, which later included recordings, and tours to Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center ...

Read more articles
2

Music Industry

Bass Meets Tuba - Tubaist Ralph Hepola Records With Legendary Bassist Bob Bowman

Bass Meets Tuba - Tubaist Ralph Hepola Records With Legendary Bassist Bob Bowman

Source: Ralph Hepola

The tuba is one of the most powerful and prominent instruments in the symphony orchestra. Tubaist Ralph Hepola has played on outstanding classical recordings (see selected discography below), but this summer he’s recording with world-class jazz musicians including a giant among bass players: legendary bassist Bob Bowman has toured and recorded with Freddie Hubbard, Carmen McRae, Bud Shank, Karrin Allyson, Bobby Watson, Steve Houghton, John Stowell, Bob Sheppard, Steve Allee, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin ...

2

Award / Grant

Missouri Arts Council Picks Tubaist Ralph Hepola For April Featured Artists

Missouri Arts Council Picks Tubaist Ralph Hepola For April Featured Artists

Source: Ralph Hepola

FEATURED ARTISTS PROGRAM Artists are the backbone of our creative state. Get to know some of the best right here! Each month, we’re designating four individual artists from all around Missouri as Featured Artists. They create and perform in every sort of genre, from sculpture to storytelling. Meet our April Featured Artists! Ralph Hepola musician | Springfield JAZZIZ Magazine has called me “a musician who plays the language of contemporary jazz on the tuba.” I play the same types ...

3

Music Industry

Ralph Hepola’s Tuba Carves Out A Place For The Much-Maligned Horn In Modern Jazz

Ralph Hepola’s Tuba Carves Out A Place For The Much-Maligned Horn In Modern Jazz

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services

Ralph Hepola’s Tuba carves out a place for the much-maligned horn in modern jazz. The virtuoso tuba player leads his quartet through a set of his freewheeling originals, playing with remarkable fluency as the lead instrument. While the tuba has often been stereotyped as a limited instrument that keeps time in marching bands, Dixieland and polka groups, Ralph Hepola on Tuba makes a strong case for his horn being the lead voice in a modern jazz combo. A brilliant player ...

1

Recording

Veteran tuba master Ralph Hepola creates a dynamic, supremely soulful new lead voice for the idiom on his eclectic debut album 'Tuba'

Veteran tuba master Ralph Hepola creates a dynamic, supremely soulful new lead voice for the idiom on his eclectic debut album 'Tuba'

Source: Ralph Hepola

Invented in both its bass and tenor forms in the 1830s by instrument builders Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht, Johann Gottfried Moritz and Johann’s son Carl Wilhelm Moritz, the tuba played a prominent role over the next century in the works of Strauss, Stravinsky, Wagner, Prokofiev, Brahms, Gershwin and others. Having played for several years with the Basel Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland and in the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival in Austria as part of a five-year stint in Europe ...

4

Music Industry

Ralph Hepola Makes A Strong Case For The Tuba As A Lead Instrument In Jazz

Ralph Hepola Makes A Strong Case For The Tuba As A Lead Instrument In Jazz

Source: Ralph Hepola

The tuba, like the banjo and the accordion, has sometimes had an image problem during the past century. While it has had an important role in classical music and early jny: New Orleans jazz, the tuba has often been associated with Dixieland, amateur bands, and comedy. There have been exceptions such as its use in the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool nonet, Gil Evans’ groups, and Howard Johnson’s tuba ensemble Gravity. There have also been around a dozen impressive ...

9

Award / Grant

Tubaist Ralph Hepola Awarded Recording Grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council

Tubaist Ralph Hepola Awarded Recording Grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council

Source: All About Jazz

The Southwest Minnesota Arts Council has awarded tuba player Ralph Hepola a five thousand dollar Individual Artist Career Grant. Under the grant proposal, Hepola will make recordings and videos documenting his work as an improvising tubaist. The project begins later this month at Wild Sound, the jny: Minneapolis recording studio-of-choice for jazz and classical musicians. Wild Sound, in Northeast Minneapolis, was originally founded at the Ford Center in downtown Minneapolis by recording engineer Matthew Zimmerman. More recently, engineer Steve Kaul ...

“A musician who plays the language of contemporary jazz on the tuba.”
- Brian Zimmerman, JAZZIZ jazziz.com JAZZIZ has been called “the voice of a new jazz culture, a culture it helped create,” and over the past 35 years has earned the reputation for its undisputed authority on jazz and style.

“Hey Jazz Fans – Ready for Some Hipster Heptones? Veteran tuba master Ralph Hepola creates a dynamic, supremely soulful new lead voice for the idiom on his eclectic debut album “Tuba”. Over the years, Ralph built an impressive career whose eclecticism lays the foundation for his current emergence as a solo artist.”
- Jonathan Widran is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Jazziz Magazine, All Music Guide, Music Connection, iTunes, Billboard.com, Amazon.com, and Singer/Songwriter Universe.

“Ralph Hepola makes a strong case for the tuba as a lead instrument in jazz

Read more

Primary Instrument

Tuba

Location

Kansas City

Willing to teach

Advanced only

Contact

Management

Gamble Marketing Group

Music

Roots and Wings

From: Tuba
By Ralph Hepola

If Four Were Three

From: Heptones
By Ralph Hepola