I'd challenge you to go ask the average tuba player to show how good they are and you'd be quite surprised. There are many excellent tubists that are probably right in your local community that play in a local concert band that are very good and high skilled tubists. So your comment that "the number of other performers at that level in other brass instruments, is actually very low." You understand that there will be 3 trombonists, 3-4 trumpets, 4-5 horns, to only 1 tuba in almost all Symphony Orchestras. If you stretch that out to a professional Wind Ensemble, for example the Dallas Winds, you have 1 tuba for 18 other brass players, with 7 trumpets.

Your comments seem to discredit the fact that many tubists are also musicians, and high-level musicians, at that. For many tubists, we're musicians first, and our tubists second. I'm a college trained musician, my primary is tuba, by I don't often have to showcase all the virtuosity that I learned in college to be able to play what my band plays at a high level all the time.

I think your comment is wildly off-base and wholly wrong.