Death of a famed tubist, 74

Barry Guerrero says:

I studied with Floyd – as much as I could afford to do so – between 1973 and 1975. He landed the S.F. Symphony job in 1969, when Ozawa was still there. I saw Floyd play the Vaughan Williams concerto with Ozawa conducting (1976, I think). Needless to say, he played it terrifically. I heard Floyd play in the S.F. Symphony numerous times, throughout the Ozawa, Edo DeWaart, Blomstedt and – partially – MTT years. His full, rich sound was hard to miss. Lessons with Floyd were long, informative and quite exacting (demanding) – just what a young hopeful needs to have. Every word he ever said to me keeps coming back now. He worked me a lot on tone production and phrasing. Most helpful, was that Floyd would work with you to come up with creative breathing solutions, in order to make a long phrase work. He was a genius in that regard. In those days, Floyd had some older and really fun instruments to try out at this place. I won’t go into that aspect (tuba ‘geek’ equipment talk). At that time, Floyd lived on a steep, hilly street in Daly City. It had a great view of the S.F. Bay Bridge. That was long before the geniuses who run S.F. allowed ridiculously tall high-rises to obstruct the view of the bridge. I lost contact with Floyd – I didn’t know he had left the U.S. to go retire. R.I.P. Floyd Cooley.