Performance Gaffes

[TubaWriter]

I write a regular column "I Like Big Brass and I Cannot Lie: Confessions from the Tuba World" for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I'd like to write my next installment on performance gaffes--times you messed up, funny moments, embarrassing moments, the time you were late for your own performance. Things like that. I bet there are a wealth of funny stories out there.

If you're willing to share and let me potentially use your anecdote in my column, please post your gaffe here, or email me at eaeshelman@gmail.com" target="_blank. Let me know whether you'd like me to attach your name to the experience or if you'd rather be anonymous.

Thanks!
Elizabeth Eshelman

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/columns/i-lik ... tuba-world" target="_blank

[sousaphone68]

Many years ago when I was 15 years old my band was asked to provide some players to take part in a production of The Music Man.
It was an amateur production but they had a lot of resources and had hired uniforms that were fashioned after a British Guardsman uniform complete with a bearskin Busby.
The finale of the show was the band in uniform marching up the aisle and onto the stage.
On opening night I missed my mark on stage and was left in front of the closing curtain. I happily played on for a couple of bars before I noticed the laughter. I then had to scramble to find the curtain gap getting more frantic as the seconds ticked by and encumbered by a tuba and an enormous hat.

[David Richoux]

I was on my way to a "Gatsby Night" gig in Berkeley CA one Saturday evening, about half way there I had a feeling that had forgotten my mouthpiece. I pulled off the freeway to check, and I had left it at home. It was too late to go back and get it, but also after closing time for any music shop along the way to get a new one.
Then I remembered Turk Murphy's band was playing at Earthquake McGoon's in San Francisco and my friend Bill Carroll was playing tuba. A quick detour across the bridge to the club, he had an extra mouthpiece, and I was on my way back to Berkeley! I was only a few minutes late for my gig. (This was well before the days of cell phones, so I was really taking a chance on everything working out.)


You can use my name.

[TubaWriter]

Thanks for the stories! Keep 'em coming...

[kontrabass]

Playing in a dixieland band...just the previous week we'd had a friend on washboard come and sit in, and he was a riot - had a whole set-up of tin cans that he hit like a miniature drumset. I'd experimented with slapping my sousaphone around to get different percussive sounds and was suddenly struck by inspiration during one particularly fast tune, and signalled the leader to give me a stop time "washboard" solo. So I took it, and away I went, tapping and slapping and knocking all over the horn, and it was great - but in my exuberance I managed to knock the mouthpiece clean off the horn and also the second valve cap, which rolled away.

During the applause I took a sheepish bow while re-attaching the mouthpiece, missing a few beats of the head out - the cardinal sin!

[Tom Eshelman]

There was a great story of a performance snafu on tubenet once, but I am unable to find it again - maybe someone else remembers it. A tubist was playing with an orchestra in a church venue. One of the pieces had a prominent tuba part. He was told the wrong time for the performance. When he arrived they had already started the tuba feature piece. The stage was small and he was unable to wade through the performing orchestra to his usual place, so he set up quickly in front and played the piece from there.

I've seen a good number of the usual gaffes - a slide falling out during a college recital, a piano accompanist at an ITEC breaking down due to page turn difficulties, an artist at USABTEC stopping his performance of a solo with a band due to a coughing spell (he eventually recovered and finished it out perfectly), a tubist missing notes in Bydlo with a top 20 pro orchestra, a gurgling euph in a tuba-euph quartet made up of local pros, a tubist in a brass quintet contest (judged by Harvey Phillips) who was missing his music for one of the pieces.

[Karl H.]

Not that funny (especially to me) but this is perhaps a learning experience that might serve as a cautionary tail for the young and aspiring amongst us...

Long ago and far away I had the good fortune to be asked by the principal tuba of the San Antonio Symphony at the time, Mike Sanders, to sub for him during a season's sabbatical. (He was going to sub in the Utah Symphony for Gary Ofenloch while Gary went to Boston to sub for Chester Schmitz who was taking a sabbatical from... but I digress). I had just received my BM from North Texas, and Don Little was kind enough to give me the year off, but still promise me my TA position would be available when I came back.

San Antonio was my first contracted orchestral position. I had to rush out and buy tails: a tux and coat-and-tie had sufficed for all my previous gigs. I remember being so proud of my new (actually, a old rental tux purchased cheap and altered to my youthful physique) threads and couldn't wait for the first week's work: wearing tails was a sure sign I was ready for the Big Time! As luck would have it, the first subscription concert featured the tuba, in Revueltas' Sensemaya. I prepared hard, and played well in the weekend's evening concerts. And as is not uncommon for that work, I got a nice solo bow from the Maestro at it's conclusion.

I was less pleased to show up at the Sunday matinee in those same tails. I had assumed ALL concerts would be in tails, and was too new/naive/young/inexperienced/stupid to realize I was supposed to be wearing a tux! We tuba players can sometimes get away with wearing the wrong color socks or two left shoes (do NOT ask how I know this) and we can maybe even get away with the wrong clothes far away in the back row... they're both mostly black and white, right?. But you should have seen the evil smile on the conductor and the heard all the giggles of my colleagues when I was asked to stand for my solo bow, the only person in the orchestra wearing the wrong outfit!

Karl "live and learn" H.

[TonyZ]

When I was in college, we were getting ready to go on tour with our wind ensemble. Our conductor told us to leave our music on the stands so that the librarian could pick up the folders and transport them to the performances. I dutifully returned my folder to my tuba locker....I am a creature of habit, after all. Needless to say, when we arrived at the gig, my folder was safely at home. Being the only tubist in the band, the conductor had to give me his scores to play from, and he conducted from memory. We did Gazebo Dances by Corigliano, Spiel by Ernst Toch and other high powered modern lit. He nailed it, and I got a page turner to sit next to me as I read from the gigantic scores.

[TubaWriter]

These are great! Thanks! Still not too late to chime in...

[kontrabass]

There was a great story of a performance snafu on tubenet once, but I am unable to find it again - maybe someone else remembers it. A tubist was playing with an orchestra in a church venue. One of the pieces had a prominent tuba part. He was told the wrong time for the performance. When he arrived they had already started the tuba feature piece. The stage was small and he was unable to wade through the performing orchestra to his usual place, so he set up quickly in front and played the piece from there.

This was Harvey Phillips. I remember this story because I helped him edit his autobiography while I was a master's student at IU. I think the context was, he was tired from playing so much and took a nap and his wife forgot to wake him so they were late. I don't have my copy handy but I think the story survived in the chapter about the freelance life in the 1960s. In fact that book is full of amazing stories like this. Some "gaffes" and some just amazing. to the original poster I'd see if you could mine the book for some of these. I remember a few others in particular:

- Mr. Phillips fell asleep on a commuter train and ended up missing his station where he was supposed to catch a ride to a regional orchestra gig. So he took a cab 70 miles and told the driver to get paid from the personnel manager while he rushed on stage. After the show the cabbie was still waiting because the manager thought he was trying to rip him off - Mr. Phillips had to confirm the fare was accurate. (I think $75 around that time).

- Getting a last minute call to sub in the New York ballet (or opera?), taking a cab across town in a blizzard while warming the tuba on the backseat, rushing backstage to find stagehands ready to take his coat and usher him into the pit, sitting down quickly to see the principal flute pointing at his music with an urgent look on his face, and giving a countdown with his hand to his next entrance, a solo - 5...4...3..2..1.. TUBA SOLO.

- Realizing just before the start of a show conducted by Gunther Schuller that he had misplaced his sheet music. Gunther was conducting and hastily wrote the part out FROM MEMORY including all the articulations and expression markings. After the show Mr. Phillips found his part rolled up inside the tuba mute.

Lots more, I recommend reading the book and not just because I worked on it

[TubaWriter]

Yes, I've been enjoying Mr. Tuba and am thinking about devoting an entire column installment to it. I especially like some of the practical jokes, too, like the time Harvey was told ballet dancers were doing the splits above where he was sitting in the orchestra pit. He took sail cloth to the next performance and tore it slowly for a delightful sound effect while the dancers did splits .

[eupher61]

2013 St Louis Low Brass Collective Gala Concert. Walking out on stage for the first piece of the 2nd half, carrying my Martin using the upright bell. I must have had my arm in the wrong place because the bell came off. I was juggling the body, the bell, and my tubarest, and the guy next to me caught the bell just as it was ready to fall completely off.

Leave the stage after that piece...reset the stage, and I go out with the group to play the 2nd piece. One on a part, 8 or so parts altogether. My first valve slide decides to fall out. I'm playing along, suddenly farts start coming out...what else but stop and get it back together. Meanwhile the guy next to me sees something happening and stops to look also. It's on YouTube--look for St Louis Low Brass Collective St Looie Blooie or some similar spelling. One of the rehearsals had been recorded, so there is a 15 or 20 second dub.

I fell off a platform while playing a Civil War gig, only 6" up. Gene Pokorny fell off the riser at Powell Hall in St Louis, a good 3', while working with his brand new (at the time, c. 1986) Yorkbrunner.

[Bob Kolada]

-I pulled out a top fourth valve slide of a 56J during a quintet gig and ended up playing it as a 3 piston, 1 rotary horn as I couldn't get the slide back in while playing...
-While on autopilot playing the Armed Services medley for the billionth time (in another quintet gig) I blanked out for two lines with several flag officers there...
-I was playing a rehearsal for the Music Man with full actors and had my phone go off in my bag below my chair (I'd turned off the ringer but forgot about an alarm I'd set the previous night). I froze thinking it was a short alarm which HAD to be ending. It wasn't, the conductor yelled, and I pounced on the bag and pulled the battery out. From then on my phone stayed in my car, off...
-I fell UP the stairs onto my bass trombone's hard case running to a rehearsal after being stuck in the snow (turned out to be the wrong building),...
-Shortly after getting my new bass trombone I was playing it on tuba parts with one other tuba player in a large community band. While spent a concert at the fair I lost my slide half way through the song. I spent the other half swearing and retrieving my slide; Scott spent the second half with his tuba down in his lap and his head on the horn laughing. No one else noticed...


The best one!

While doing a NATO change of command ceremony in Germany in 2012, it was so hot the valves in my borrowed euph were sticking. Every time we went to parade rest to change music I'd pull a valve and desperately spit on it. Still, by the time we marched out all the valves were stuck. The best solution? Hold the horn up, blow through it, and hope none of the hundred+ soldiers we marched out past knew how to play a brass instrument.

[TubaWriter]

I've been digging around the Tubenet for stories from older posts. For fun, here are a few relevant threads I found:

Tuba Accidents viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14263" target="_blank
Tuba Got Run Over By A Hyundi viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18296&p=150624&hilit" target="_blank
Sometimes You Just Feel Silly Playing the Tuba viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28010&hilit" target="_blank
I dropped a tuba... viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33385&hilit" target="_blank

[Steve Marcus]

The brass quintet had an arrangement of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus in Bb Major; the church organist had the music in the original key of D Major. The organist simply pressed the button on the organ's transposer to lower the pitch by two whole steps, and all was jolly good in the run-through before the service. We played the intro; she entered where the choir and congregation would begin singing.

Yup, you can guess what happened--or what didn't happen. Unfortunately, the organist didn't pick up the gaffe until well after her entrance. She was so shaken up that we continued playing while she sat silently for a few bars. It wasn't until "For the Lord God omnipotent" that she pressed the correct button and joined the quintet in glorious Bb Major in the performance.

[Rick F]

Not sure if this qualifies as a gaffe as it occurred about two hours before the concert.

A section mate of mine called me on my cell while I was visiting my mother-in-law in the hospital after knee surgery. He asked if I knew where he could borrow a euphonium for tonight's concert. I asked him, "what's wrong with your horn?" He replied, "it's playing really flat... my wife ran over it with the car". "Yikes! You're kidding," I said. It seems he was on his way out to the concert early to run some errands and forgot something in the house. He set his horn down (in gig bag) on the garage floor next to his car to get what he forgot in the house. His wife came home in her own car (while he was inside the house), opened the garage door, didn't see the horn and drove over it. Needless to say it was unplayable with squashed bell and bent lead-pipe.

[trnewcomb]

Not really a performance gaffe since it occurred well before the actual performance, but here's the story.

I was hired to play a house party with a quartet. I was the sole bass - the other players were trumpet, reeds, and banjo. I play a 1909 Conn EEb helicon and the guy putting the band together specifically asked me to bring that horn, since he really likes the sound. The gig is about a three hour drive from my house and I have family nearby, so I planned to go up the day before to spend time with them. I spent Friday evening going over the horn and had it in tiptop shape - cleaned, lubed, oiled, polished, etc. You know the drill. I then gently leaned the horn against the couch while I put my overnight bag together. As I closed the bag, I stepped backward, momentarily forgetting the horn was behind me and my foot caught the horn. It over balanced and fell right on the neck (which I've had strengthened due to the weight of my Clements mouthpiece), tearing the lead pipe completely free of the horn. OUCH!

Result: The horn is now unplayable and it's 10:30 PM on a Friday night. The gig is Sunday afternoon, leaving me exactly one day to get things fixed. No worries, I think to myself - I live near a really good shop so I call my buddy there bright and early the next morning. Oh, sorry, he says, we're closed this weekend due to the arts and wine festival closing down all the streets! ARGH! I spend the next four hours calling every shop in a five-hour drive radius. No good - everyone was shut down or couldn't get the repairs done.

Fortunately, I did have other options. I ended up playing the gig on my BBb Miraphone 186 and the guys were fine with that sound, but man, that was embarrassing. Since then, I NEVER leave the neck in the lead pipe.

[Tubaryan12]

In high school jazz band, we had dancers that would do a couple of numbers. I was playing bass trombone in this group. There was one girl that, to put it lightly, I found to be mesmerizing...so much so that when she danced in front of me, and I made the mistake of looking up, I would stop playing. This would happen in rehearsals as well as performances. The director actually thought it was pretty funny, and would literally facepalm and shake his head when it happened.

During one performance, I made the mistake of looking up and released the outer slide and it slid across the floor in front of them. Fortunate for me, I always traveled with 2 horns, set up and ready to play. I calmly set the 1st horn down, picked up the backup horn and finished the tune. The director handed me the slide afterward.

The young lady graduated that year and there were no further incidents.

(I told this story to her 30 years later. She said hearing that made her day.)

[TubaWriter]

Thanks to all who shared stories! I decided to go for a loose Origin of Species style. You can read my finished piece here: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/prin ... he-species" target="_blank" target="_blank

-Elizabeth