R. Winston Morris has been internationally recognized for the past thirty-five years as one of the leaders in the advancement in the tuba. He is Professor of Music and former Instructor of Tuba and Euphonium at Tennessee Technological University, in Cookeville, Tennessee, where he has been on the faculty since 1967.
Morris is regarded as the leading authority on literature for the tuba, was one of the founding fathers of the Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association (T.U.B.A.), and acknowledged worldwide as the major authority on development of the tuba ensemble. He is the Senior Editor for the recently published Tuba Source Book, conductor of the large professional tuba/euphonium ensemble, Symphonia, and has been awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association.
He has been a tireless advocate of utilizing the tuba and euphonium in the jazz idiom. As the conductor of the famed Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble (TTTE), he started promoting jazz tuba performance in an ensemble setting as early as 1968. Jazz was an important "element" throughout the numerous recording projects of the TTTE and several recordings were devoted exclusively to the jazz genre. The TTTE has performed dozens of jazz concerts in venues throughout the eastern half of the United States including The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, two World Fairs (Knoxville and New Orleans), national and international conferences and five unprecedented Carnegie Recital Hall concerts. As a tuba performer Morris has performed with Taj Mahal and extensively as a founding member of the acclaimed Matteson/Phillips TUBAJAZZ CONSORT in venues ranging from Montreux, Switzerland to Monterey, California; from Sapporo, Japan to Sydney, Australia; and from the Jazz Showcase in Chicago to Donte's Jazz Club in Hollywood.
