Famous Guy-on-the-Podium Stories?

[Michael Bush]

It might be entertaining to have a thread for stories about experiences with or about conductors or band directors a number of us could have experiences with. Funny, educational, etc.? I was about to post this memory of Revelli in the Benge 18 thread, and then thought this might have a life of its own.

So I remember playing under Revelli at the Morehead State University Band Clinic in the late 70s-early 80s. He was a more or less terrifying figure to a 16-18 year old. He had this thing about Revelli time, which meant in your seat, warmed up, ready to rehearse 15 minutes before the announced time. And he would from sometimes drop everything in a rehearsal and reseat a section based on one passage. This befell some clarinets the first time I saw it. But one year the tubas' time came. We were playing "Melody Shop," and I remember there is an accidental in a run leading into a repeat, I believe it's an A, if memory serves. If anyone in the section had gotten the accidental right, he would have been instantly first chair. We all played Ab (or whatever note it was as was called for in the key signature). So he left the section as we were. But he still made us play it over and over in front of the whole band until we were all doing it right.

A couple of years ago I was in a community band rehearsal working on one of his arrangements of a Sousa march. (The purpose of these arrangements seems to have been to leave nothing to chance, to tell the world how it was supposed to be done.) The director at one point told us to do something different from the way it was written, with the comment, "Revelli is dead." To which someone with experience replied, "Yea, but we're still afraid of him."

Afraid of him, yes, but still respected him and very grateful for those experiences.

[bort]

Not a podium, but a TubaChristmas rehearsal...

I played straight through a rest, and Harvey Phillips was conducting; he cut off the entire 200+ person group and yelled at me "pay attention, dammit!"

[tbn.al]

Fennell was the visiting conductor at Ark Tech in 66, I think. He jumped off the podium, over a music stand, to get into the face of an offending oboist. Being on the back row I didn't really get to see it, but it was the talk of the WW section for a while.