 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken
Date: 2000-05-30 11:16
True story? Here's one for the books: My old band used to play an annual evening outdoor park concert for the VFW in Philadelphia. One year we were rained out and had to move the performance to an alternate rain site which turned out to be a condemned 100 year old elementary school all- purpose auditorium. It had just three small windows, no house lights (except a cheesy lighting tree they jerry-rigged for us) and by gig-time it was all ready dark. It was the custom of our director during the concert to incorporate the "kiddie conducting" bit; go out into the audience, choose a little boy and girl and have them come up and take turns conducting the band in a march. Normally, he would canvas the audience and grab the first two kids he saw, but becuase of the extremely poor lighting in the auditorium and all the "blue hairs" he had a hard time finding some. I was playing 2nd clarinet and sitting on the outside end of the band (stage right). It was so dark I could only see the first two rows and he seemed to be gone an unusually long time Finally, after at ten minutes of searching he found his candidates. I began noticing the other side of the band began "rumbling" and as I looked across the sections saw the flute player leaning down with her head in her hands and her shoulders shaking violently. The oboe players' face was beet-red with a single tear rolling down his cheek. The horns and bones were roaring with laughter! Well, as I turned around to see what the excitment was about I saw my director coming up the front stage steps with a little 8-year old boy in one hand and a female midget in the other!! By that time it was too late, he didn't realize what he had done until he got up on stage. What a spectacle, the the band and most of the audience were on the floor. Biting his lip in embarrassment but gracefully, he escorted her to the podium grabbed her arms and quickly gave the downbeat to
"Bravura". The band was so broke up that only one trumpet player came in for the first six bars. We had to stop and restart the march but managed to get through it. Boy, did we get our butts chewed after the concert for that one.
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Author: Pam
Date: 2000-05-30 13:20
Funny! I am surprised you were allowed to go in the building though as it was condemned.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2000-05-30 14:53
Great, Ken, our band hasn't had quite that experience, but we have "trained" a few amateur conductors [at concerts!!].
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Author: larry
Date: 2000-05-30 18:28
Sounds a bit cruel to me, but maybe I have no sense of humor.
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2000-05-30 22:57
All the best humour is cruel, to some extent. I have seen joke sites on the web where the jokes have been cleaned up to such an extent that they are no longer funny.
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Author: Mike Irish
Date: 2000-05-31 05:22
it really depends on who is sitting on the city counsel at the time... I have seen a perfectly good building condemed because the owner would not sell it to a peticular person, so with friends on the city counsel, they manage to get it condemmed and then the value drops to almost nothing...
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Author: Bill
Date: 2000-05-31 12:45
A somewhat similar true story:
A concert band I was in a number of years ago played an outdoor concert on the Boston Common. It was a gorgeous summer day and we attracted a good-size crowd of listeners. The crowd included a group of adult patients from some type of mental institution who were out for exercise with their chaperone/attendant. One of the group, a woman, walked around while we were playing, waving her arms as if she were conducting us. As the concert went on, she edged closer and closer to where we were sitting. We were watching her more than the conductor and he started looking over his shoulder to see what was going on behind him. When we came to the last piece - our usual Stars and Stripes -the conductor walked over to the woman, handed her his baton, gave us the downbeat, and stepped aside. You don't need a conductor for the Stars and Stripes, of course, but this woman did a good job of beating time with us and, if I remember correctly, even stopped conducting when we stopped playing (something not all of our guest conductors managed to do). Anyway, the highlight of that concert was the look on that poor woman's face as she conducted a real band with a real baton and the applause she got when she finished.
Bill
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Author: James
Date: 2000-05-31 14:39
Ken,
The performance in that condemned auditorium must have been very good but fortunately for all present not great. If it was great it might have "brought down the house."
James (with tongue firmly implanted in cheek)
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Author: Ken
Date: 2000-06-05 05:41
Geez! This was supposed to be a hunorous anecdote based on one of many true experiences throughout my military career...not an invitation on a discussion of building codes. Enjoy life as it comes, and please get a life!
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