Obituary: Sam Pilafian, 69 Tuba Maestro of Multiple Genres

Empire Brass embraces the classic brass quintet configuration — a pair of trumpets, French horn, trombone and tuba — and has long been known for its virtuosity and showmanship.

“You have not often heard an ensemble that played with more gusto than this one,” the New York Times music critic Donal Henahan wrote of an Empire recital in 1977. “Individual notes were hit in the center and chords were blended with the transparency that comes from exact corporate intonation. Phrases, even at dashing tempos, were lyrical and supple. Balances were perfectly achieved without any obtrusive effort.”

Vignola recalled being a guest artist at a recording session with Empire Brass in the early 1990s when the producer asked him to make a jazz record with Pilafian. “Travelin’ Light,” the first of several albums they made, helped start them off as a touring duo.

“Who would have thought, a jazz tuba and an acoustic guitar?” Mr. Vignola said in a telephone interview from Sweden, where he was performing. “We were an odd couple, but our act went over. Sam was a great entertainer and, like Louis Armstrong, broke all the rules.”

James Samuel Pilafian was born on October 25, 1949, in Miami. His father, James, was a lawyer, and his mother, Rosa (Boyajian) Pilafian, known as Shocky, was a paralegal in her husband’s firm and managed their commercial properties.

Sam played the accordion as a youngster. But he switched instruments at 11 on the advice of a veteran tubist, who told him that if he played tuba he would always have friends.

He was a quick study and within a few years had joined the musicians union and was playing in hotel orchestras that backed headliners like Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli, and in a six-piece Dixieland band that performed at racetracks and other places around Miami.

While attending what is now the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, where he earned a bachelor’s degree, he had a summer fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center for advanced music training in Lenox, Mass. His tuba playing impressed Leonard Bernstein, who was an adviser there, and who enlisted him in the orchestra for the premiere of his theatrical work “Mass” at the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1971.

Tanglewood was also the birthplace of Empire Brass.

Michael Tilson Thomas, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, was then a conducting student at Tanglewood. He told Bernstein that the five brass instrumentalists “should begin playing together because we sound alike, although we had never met,” Pilafian told The Post-Dispatch.

“So we did,” he added, “and we became a rehearsal band, getting together just to rehearse.”

He remained with the group for 22 years, leaving in 1993.

Pilafian, whose tuba mentors included Arnold Jacobs, the longtime former principal tubist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was also a teacher for many years. He held positions at Boston University, Berklee College of Music, the Tanglewood Institute, Arizona State University and the Frost School. He and a fellow tubist, Patrick Sheridan, developed a series of exercises adapted from martial arts and yoga to help singers and wind and brass players breathe more effectively.

“My teaching philosophy has always been predicated on catching students doing something right,” he told the magazine The Brass Herald in 2013.

The tubist Andrew Hitz recalled being a shy 14-year-old at Tanglewood in the summer of 1990 when Mr. Pilafian eased his fears.

“I could play as well as anybody, but I was scared and in tears,” Hitz said by telephone. “But Sam was able with me, and countless others, to insulate us from criticism and make us feel you were safe, while challenging the hell out of you. The gift he gave me is that I never again questioned whether I belonged with any musicians.”

In addition to his wife, Pilafian is survived by his sons, Alexander Sarkis Pilafian and Zev Levin-Pilafian, and his sisters, Marni Pilafian and Nerisa Gay Pilafian.

When Pilafian was in college, he was determined to do whatever was necessary to elevate his musicianship. So he tried an experiment with a friend, Mike Gerber, a blind pianist, he told NDSU Magazine in 2017, when he was a visiting artist at North Dakota State University.

Fascinated by Gerber’s heightened sense of hearing, Mr. Pilafian bandaged his own eyes. He was disoriented that first day but felt that his hearing had noticeably improved after three days. On Day 4, he concluded that his listening had grown dramatically acute, and he could play back whatever Mr. Gerber played on the piano.

“Nothing was the same after that,” he said.